Writer Unboxed

1. & 2. Pocketful of Names, One Vacant Chair – Joe Coomer. How a writer like Coomer managed to slip under my radar for as long as he did is beyond me. A friend recently discovered him and passed along his name, and I’ve been devouring everything he’s written, from most to least recent, ever since. Coomer divides his time, and his subject matter, between Texas and Maine, with occasional road trips farther afield. I could go on and on about the originality and complexity of his characters or the seamless beauty of his prose, but bottom line, I can’t think of any contemporary author who writes more truthfully about the struggle and the rewards of making art for art’s sake. If you’ve not yet made his acquaintance, run, don’t walk, to your bookstore or library.

3. & 4. Second Draft of My Life, The Answer is Yes – Sara Lewis. Lewis is another writer of several novels whom I came upon accidentally and late. Her stories may not be as unpredictable as Coomer’s but are just as inventive, and she writes winningly and humorously about likeable people looking for second chances.

5. Approximately Heaven – James Whorton, Jr. I read this book twice almost back-to-back, so captivated was I by Whorton’s spare but incredibly funny story of a screwed-up guy on the verge of losing it all, and how he and an equally engaging cast of misfits manage to pull it back together again. The dialogue alone is priceless.

6. & 7. Provinces of Night, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down – William Gay. I usually cringe when I hear the word “genius,” but Gay, of Tennessee, has the chops and the cred, including a slew of prizes and a Guggenheim, to back it up. These backwoods stories are bleak and uncompromising, but the stark precision of the language and the way Gay infiltrates his characters’ heads and worlds is—well, I’ve used the ‘g’ word once already. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

8. Blues for Hannah – Tim Farrington. This is one of my all-time favorite books, and just about impossible to find. (After checking it out at least half a dozen times from libraries over the years, and attempting to score a copy from various dealers of out-of-print books for less than $90, I finally lucked onto it at local outlet for the bargain price of $17 + change.) Farrington has written several good novels since, but this one holds a special place in my heart because it’s about two of my favorite subjects, love and art: the lengths people will go to for them, and how they manage to carve out lives for themselves when one or both are lost.

9. Polar – T.R. Pearson. Choosing one Pearson book for this list was like choosing one jelly bean out of the jar. I’ve been a fan since his first book, A Short History of a Small Place, and I’ll be damned if I can name precisely what it is about this one that sets it apart from the rest. Could it be that both the characters and the subject matter are more peculiar and more ambitious, and that he pulls the whole thing off in a way that left me reeling, laughing my butt off, and still craving more?

10. On Agate Hill – Lee Smith. Smith is hardly an unknown name in literary circles, but the mystery is how she just keeps getting better and better. This, her latest, tracing the long and eventful life of one headstrong woman from girlhood after the Civil War to old age in the early 20th century, is simply one of the most moving and flawlessly written novels I’ve read in ages, possibly surpassing the mastery of her earlier books Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and The Devil’s Dream.

Happy holiday reading, everyone!

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