New books: Picador box day is always a good day

Posted Mar 18, 2010 by Kevin Walker

Updated Mar 18, 2010 at 04:57 PM

One of the great things about editing book reviews for the Tampa Tribune are the days when a box of new paperbacks arrive from Picador. I love Picador books. I don’t know who decides on what titles to print—they run the gamut from contemporary literature to high-end genre fiction to interesting memoirs—but I want to have lunch with that person. While the topics vary wildly, what seperates most Picador books is the fact they are filled with great—sometimes inventive—writing. Writers you’ll see in Picador books include Michael Chabon, Jonathan Frazen, Austen Burroughs, Salman Rushdie and Tom Wolfe.

Picador, which started in 1995, deals exclusively in paperbacks, some originals, some printed previously by the likes of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and St Martin’s Press. I see a Picador box and I know I’m going to be up late that night, reading. Here’s some of what arrived today, all these titles will be available in late March/early April.

“Paris Trance” by Geoff Dyer. Dyer channels Fitzgerald and Hemingway in this novel about two American expatriates who each fall in love, leading to a sex and drug-fueled romp through the City of Lights. The Sundays Times (London) wrote that Dyer “masterfully dissects the vicissitudes of twenty-something love,” a review I mention because a) it seems accurate from what I can tell of this novel and b) someone used vicissitudes in a book review.

“Mathilda Savitch” by Victor Lodato. When a young girl’s older sister is killed, her parents go into a zombie state. Mathilda takes it on herself to snap her family out of their depression and get some attention, and she decides to do it by being bad. The opening lines: “I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not?...When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn’t slip, that’s how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse.”

I want to read more of that, see what I’m saying?

“Old City Hall” by Robert Rotenberg. Thriller set in Toronto by a Canadian writer, it centers on the murder of a radio host’s wife. The radio host initially confessed to the murder, but now he won’t talk to anyone. Reviewers wrote about atmosphere and tension and twists. all of which are things I like.

“Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” by Danzy Senna. The author offers an economical, controlled book about the failure of her parents interacial marriage, using it as a lens to look at race relations in America. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that you, the reader, can use the story as a different way to look at race relations in America.

“Shadow and Light” by Jonathan Rabb. This is maybe the one I am most fired up about. A crime noir novel set in 1927 Berlin, it starts with the murder of a German Cinema executive. Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissor Nikolai Hoffner is sent in solve the case, enlisting the help of director Fritz Lang and a criminal overlord. As it unfolds, the reader gets a tour of pre-Nazi Germany in the heyday of the German film industry.

Happy reading.