rachelfershleiser

[rachelfershleiser]

Watchful, bookish Cat and reckless, alluring Marlena have plenty of literary and pop cultural antecedents, but Buntin, through closely observed detail, makes these two her own. Their attachment is full of lovely teenage-girl things — cherry lip gloss, cut-up T-shirts, hearts drawn on the back of a hand, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks songs, tossed-off but unforgotten intimacies: “She scrapes a set of fingernails against my kneecap, a small circle that opens outward, shivering through me.” They share sarcasm, but they also share a simmering rage at being poor and female and cornered in a world with few options for them — where escape appears mostly in the form of another trap: addiction. Alcohol for Cat, pills for Marlena. The prevalence of opioids, along with meth, is more than a timely backdrop here; it figures inextricably into the novel’s plot — the unraveling of Marlena’s life and the lasting consequences for Cat. “We were basically statistics,” Cat tells us, but one of Buntin’s achievements is in acknowledging that reality while constructing characters that are anything but

A Debut Calls a Ferrante-Style Female Friendship to the Fore - NYTimes.com

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From the Archives: National Pet Day

By HMH archivist Susan Steinway.

April 11 is National Pet Day, a day to celebrate the bond between humans and their animals and all the ways that animals enrich our lives.  So many writers have shared their lives with pets so let’s take this opportunity to celebrate HMH authors and their animals.  Among HMH authors there are dog people and cat people and those who owned both, as well as those who owned more exotic pets.  This is by no means a definitive list, it is rather a celebration of writers and animals and that joy that both books and pets can bring to our lives.

It’s probably no surprise that Rachel Carson, seen here as a child reading to her dog, would be an animal lover.  Her life’s work was about protecting the natural world and she is remembered and honored for stopping the spread of DDT and other insecticides that were harming every living thing.  And while she had dogs as a child when she grew up she favored cats, seen here doing what cats do best, interrupting work:

Gertrude Stein was a dog lover, and she felt that her dog enhanced her understanding of her work.  She and her partner Alice B. Toklas owned a white Standard Poodle named Basket.  When Basket died the two women got another and named him Basket II.

Toklas said, “Basket, a large, unwieldy white poodle, still will get up on Gertrude’s lap and stay there. She says that listening to the rhythm of his water drinking made her recognize the difference between sentences and paragraphs; that paragraphs are emotional and sentences are not.”

Animals formed a large part of Virginia Woolf’s life and work.  She and her circle often used animal names for each other:  Virginia was known as Goat, her sister, Vanessa Bell, as Dolphin, and her husband, Leonard, as Mongoose.  Woolf’s diary mentions that she bought a “beautiful cat, a Persian” with the first money she earned with her writing. Alas, there is no picture of that cat available, but there are several photographs of Woolf with her dogs.  Here she is in 1926 with Leonard and their dog:

And here she is about ten years later with another dog, Pinka:

Woolf even wrote a book about a dog, FLUSH (1933), a biography of poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog. Woolf intended the book as a joke, poking fun at her good friend the biographer (and HMH author) Lytton Strachey and she was embarrassed by its success.

Of course, while cats and dogs are the most familiar and the most abundant among household pets, there are those who prefer other kinds of animals.  Flannery O’Connor loved all kinds of fowl.  She began with chickens when she was five years old – she wrote an essay in 1961 called “Living with a Peacock” that describes how she taught two chickens to walk backwards when she was a child – and she went on to keep ever increasingly fancy birds.  Here she is with her ducks:

and here she is with two of her peacocks:

I don’t want to give you the impression that it was only women authors who loved and kept pets, however.  Men loved their pets just as much.  And male authors, too, had non-traditional pets.  Here’s Carl Sandburg with his goats:

Jack Kerouac was cat person, who said of his cat Tyke “I loved Tyke with all my heart, he was my baby who as a kitten just slept in the palm of my hand and with his little head hanging down, or just purring for hours, just as long as I held him … he had complete confidence in me.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on the other hand was a dog person.  He and his family owned many pets, and he wrote that the “last and the greatest of all the dogs was Trap; Trap the Scotch Terrier, Trap the polite, the elegant:”

Robert Penn Warren had both cats and dogs, although I don’t know if it was at the same time; he looks older in the photo with the dog:

(don’t you love that he’s reading his own book of poems in that photo?)

And I wonder if that is a cat peeking over George Orwell’s shoulder in this photo of him and his dog on the rocky beach of the Isle of Jura, where he wrote NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR:

Orwell was living on a farm on Jura so I don’t know if it’s fair to say that he kept goats as pets, but this picture is too great not to include here:

I love that he is feeding the goat while wearing a suit jacket.

And speaking of elegant, I also really like this photo of Erich Maria Remarque, who published five books and one play with Harcourt during the 1950s and 60s, and here he is with his dog who seems more interested in having his photo taken than Remarque does:

And finally, another man in a suit with his dog: John Dos Passos.  Even though you can barely see the dog in this photo it looks as if Dos Passos, like Gertrude Stein, liked poodles:

I hope you have a wonderful and cozy National Pet Day with whatever animal shares your life.

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Julie Buntin’s debut novel, “Marlena,’’ is a thrilling and important examination of female adolescent friendship. This is a subject that has been treated recently in books like Emma Cline’s “The Girls’’ and Robin Wasserman’s “Girls on Fire,’’ both of which include the same archetypal characters: the troubled older teenager, the naïve younger girl who worships her. But while these books seem also to be “about” the time period in which they’re set — “The Girls’’ takes place in the Manson-era 1960s, “Girls on Fire’’ in the Cobain-era 1990s — “Marlena’’ feels timeless, its vivid characters suspended in the difficult moment of awakening just before adulthood. It is a gem of a book, brief and urgent, nearly perfect in its execution.

Harrowing tale of teen addict and the naïve younger girl who worships her - The Boston Globe

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@entertainmentweekly just announced Gabourey Sidibe’s THIS IS JUST MY FACE tour schedule!

She’ll be appearing with Lena Dunham, Tracy Clayton (aka @brokeymcpoverty), @roxanegay, @lindaholmes, and Britt Julious (@britticisms), and as if that weren’t enough, EW also has an excerpt from THIS IS JUST MY FACE on their site now! So what are you waiting for? Get your ticket and get reading!

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The Sympathy Tour of New York City

In Olivia Sudjic’s new novel SYMPATHY, narrator Alice Hare rapidly becomes obsessed with the twin grids of the Instagram feed and the streets of New York, the city of her birth. She says of Manhattan,

“The sight of the city was like a machine I could not isolate the significance of any part of. Later, when I had learnt my way around by walking, I could situate myself when I stood in that same spot by looking down… The city would, in a few months, become a series of familiar routes, an equation I could begin to unpick.“

So to introduce you to Alice and her version of New York, we created a SYMPATHY tour, putting dates with her boyfriend, all-day walks through the city, and meetings with Mizuko, a Columbia professor whose life seems to mirror Alice’s in strange and surprising ways, into a Google map for you to click through from afar or see for yourself. 

The other day, I visited a few particularly important locations, starting at the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, where Alice’s mother meets the surrogate who she hopes will give birth to Alice. And of course, what better place to bring a book narrated by a character named Alice Hare?

On Alice’s first date with her boyfriend Dwight, they walk to the viewing platform of Belvedere Castle. Without a “Tech Man” telling me “things about himself that should have made him sound urbane, but did the opposite,” I could just enjoy the nice view of the park. 

From Central Park, Dwight takes Alice to Harlem for dinner, drinks, and dancing. Instead, take the train to Morningside Heights, where Mizuko lives and most of the action of the book takes place. If I had really wanted to do this tour the Alice way, I would’ve walked the 30+ blocks, but in the interest of time, I just took the train from the Museum of Natural History up to 110th Street.

My first stop was the Hungarian Pastry Shop, which Alice recognizes on Mizuko’s Instagram feed “from the red paint on the wall beneath the rail and the crispy strata of the cake.” I ended up having to take a table outside – Alice doesn’t exaggerate about the “steady stream of Columbia students who were territorial about their work spots and writing nooks.” As it happened, I sat next to a professor and an undergrad, who, after I took the following photo, had a conversation about the vapidity of social media. 👌

From there I made my way to Columbia, where Mizuko is a professor in the MFA program. Passing the landmarks Alice sees on her walks to Mizuko’s apartment – the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and a coffee shop called Nussbaum & Wu – the book becomes that much more real and I start to feel as if I really am following Alice.

I stop briefly in front of Butler Library, where Alice keeps Mizuko company as she works.

The next stop is Sakura Park, which Alice describes as 

“the small park right by where I had lived beside the school of music on Claremont Avenue. It was green and canopied by Linden trees. Somehow it was quiet and I stopped hearing the big red New York Sightseeing buses rumble past. When I lay in the grass beside the pagoda I had a vivid recollection of being tiny. Of looking at blades of grass as an object of fascination, broad as my finger nails.”

After looping back through Morningside Park, I stopped at Miss Mamie’s, a Southern-style restaurant that Alice goes to because she decides it will look good on her Instagram. 

With the sun beginning to set, I decided to leave Alice Hare’s New York and head back to mine, but that doesn’t mean you have to. You can check out the full Google Maps tour here or pick up your own copy of Olivia Sudjic’s 🌸SYMPATHY🌸, out today!

– Emily Wilkerson, HMH social media team 

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Extremely proud to have been part of choosing these finalists for the Young Lions Award, and of these brilliant writers—read them all!

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So proud to present this delicious bookcandy: A new hardcover edition of an all-too-relevant classic. 💋🍒❤️🌶📕

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This is where Attenberg’s brilliance lies: in her ability to mix tenderness with tragicomedy; to find what’s funny in the funereal; to render the dignity of those who fear they’ve lost it.

Author Jami Attenberg's newest heroine is the anti-Jewish mother - Books - Haaretz.com

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Praise for Hala Alyan’s SALT HOUSES has been pouring in. In a starred review, Kirkus called it “a deeply moving look inside the Palestinian diaspora” and Library Journal says it “beautifully illustrates the resilience of the human spirit.” 

We love this cross-generational family portrait and we know you will too, so we’re offering the ebook for just $6.99! This deal is only good until the book comes out on May 2, so reserve your copy of this remarkable debut novel now. 

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Snowstorm shopping list:

Bread

Milk

Books!

BELLWEATHER RHAPSODY is the perfect book to get snowed in with, and today it’s only $1.99! ❄️❄️❄️

Amazon Barnes & Noble Google iBooks Kobo

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OH GOD I MISS YOU @staff!

#TechStandsWithPP: A message from Tumblr’s CEO and Planned Parenthood’s president

When Planned Parenthood was founded a century ago, it was illegal to even hand out information about birth control. Thanks to generations of brave women and men who formed secret societies, challenged unjust laws, and started Planned Parenthood health centers in their own towns, we’ve come a long way since. Millions of people, regardless of income or insurance coverage, now have access to birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment. Each year, Planned Parenthood proudly provides health information to nearly 70 million people online and 1 million people in classrooms and communities across the country. Today, America is at a 30-year low in unintended pregnancy and a historic low in teen pregnancy.

But all of that progress is a reminder of how much women and men in America now stand to lose. Extreme politicians at every level of government are doing everything they can to block millions of people from coming to Planned Parenthood, deny access to affordable health care, and roll back women’s rights over their own bodies. We are facing a national health disaster, especially in our most vulnerable communities.

That’s why we’re calling on the tech industry to join Tumblr in standing with Planned Parenthood and standing up for access to health care.

A 100-year-old health care provider and the platform powering 335 million blogs may seem like an unlikely pair. But over the last few years, Tumblr and Planned Parenthood have teamed up to provide information and organize communities in support of reproductive rights. We’re proud of all we’ve accomplished together and with overwhelming support from the Tumblr community.

Technology has become instrumental in the fight for fairness and equality across a range of issues. It has the power to influence public debate, mobilize communities, and — most importantly — offer creative solutions to help people receive better care, no matter where they live or who they are. Finally, the tech industry owes its success to the brilliant people it employs and the communities it serves — and we cannot take their health for granted.

It won’t be easy, but doing nothing isn’t an option when lives are at stake. We need to work together to break down barriers to care and information for the millions of people desperate to take ownership of their sexual and reproductive health, and tackle disparities in health care access and outcomes.

Now is the time to be vocal, visible, and active in your support of Planned Parenthood — starting with the #TechStandsWithPP hashtag to share stories about how Planned Parenthood has touched your life, or the life of anyone you know. Call on your co-workers and peers to do the same.

In health care, education, and nearly every industry, we’re doing things that would have been unthinkable a century ago. Think of all we can achieve together in the decades to come if we combine the creativity, innovation, and energy of the tech community with Planned Parenthood’s commitment to helping people everywhere — no matter what.

— David Karp + Cecile Richards

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!!!!!

‪So it turns out that when you send RBG a book about a quietly fierce woman with a reverence for justice, you get this in response. 😮‬ 

Looking forward to your own “reading treat?” THE WEIGHT OF INK by Rachel Kadish comes out in June!

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The good news is that ALL GROWN UP is on-sale tomorrow! The bad news is that today is the LAST DAY for pre-order pins!

Look what I got in the mail!! Thanks, @jamiattenberg and @hmhbooks !!

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Two months until THIS IS JUST MY FACE! And when @roxanegay likes a book, you know it’s going to be good.

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New @jamiatt coming Jami Att-cha so so so so soon!

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Jia Tolentino at @housingworksbookstore, 2/22/17

[rachelfershleiser]

Keep the ALL GROWN UP pin pics coming! And if you’re all “what are these? I want someeee!” pre-order the book and send your receipt to trademarketing@hmhco.com and we’ll put some in the mail to you!