Literary.

FICTION

NEW BOOKS GUIDE

We read hundreds of book reviews each month to select the works to include in each issue. We seek a balance among three categories: highly-rated books that received many reviews, highlyrated books that received less comprehensive coverage, and lower-rated books that were widely reviewed and well publicized.

The collective wisdom of critics

Each critic offers an individual perspective. We quote and summarize the reviews studied to provide an informed, balanced critique and to make sure that unique insights do not get missed. We apply a rating to a book from each review we study--those ratings are assessed to provide a final rating.

Spoiler-free book descriptions

We hereby pledge not to reveal the ending or revelatory plot points when discussing a fictional work.

APPLYING RATINGS TO WORKS OF ART IS FRUSTRATINGLY REDUCTIONIST

It is also helpful in navigating through myriad choices. As with any rating system, it is solely a guide--a summing up of several informed perspectives. There is no substitute for reading the book yourself and forming your own opinion.

RATINGS

***** CLASSIC

A timeless book to be read by all

**** EXCELLENT

One of the best of its genre

*** GOOD

Enjoyable, particularly for fans of the genre

** FAIR

Some problems, approach with caution

* POOR

Not worth your time

****

The Blue Star

By Tony Earley

A bygone era.

In Jim the Boy (2000), Tony Earley introduced 10-year-old Jim Glass, raised in Depression-era Aliceville, North Carolina, by his widowed mother and three bachelor uncles. In this sequel, set in 1941, Jim Glass, now a high school senior, is navigating life as a young adult when he falls head over heels for classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie, a half-Cherokee girl, is from the wrong side of the mountain--and already belongs to Bucky Bucklaw, an arrogant, possessive Navy kid stationed in Pearl Harbor. To make matters worse, Chrissie and her mother live as tenants on the Bucklaws' land. While Jim grapples with Chrissie's difficult situation, he must decide whether or not to join the army.

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Little, Brown. 286 pages. $23.99. ISBN: 0316199079

Boston Globe ****

"On the surface Earley's prose seems limpid and plain, but out of his precise observations emerge moments of wonder and enchantment, the sweep of fable. He is not afraid of techniques that to postmodern readers might appear quaint, such as personification, because in the eyes of his romantic hero the Appalachian landscape is truly alive." PORTER SHREVE

Kansas City Star ****

"[Earley] has mastery of what the critic James Wood has called 'free indirect style,' meaning he narrates in the third person, altering his prose and point of view ever so slightly to give the appearance of being inside the heads of one character or the next. In this fashion, the novel tells an enormous, emotional story about a boy turning to a man through his own foolish love, without ever falling prey to a teenager's myopic narcissism." JOHN FREEMAN

NY Times Book Review ****

"It's such a deceptively simple strategy--to take the unembellished storytelling style of children's literature and to bend it to adult themes--that many novelists will feel like smacking themselves on the side of the head for not having thought of it themselves. But it is no easy feat, especially to stay inside the hazard lines of sentimentality." SCOTT TUROW

Newsday ****

"In gentle prose Earley invites us to mourn the past and remember the beauty of what we have lost. ... We have no notion of Jim's fate--but that's just fine." BETHANY SCHNEIDER

USA Today ****

"I'm happy to report that Earley's The Blue Star works as a sequel and a lovely coming-of-age story that can be savored on its own. ... He creates people, old and young, whom you want to know and want to listen to, even when they're struggling to figure out what they think and feel." BOB MINZESHEIMER

Christian Science Monitor ****

"The Blue Star isn't quite as free from the taint of melodrama as Jim the Boy. ... But in the end, Earley delivers a rarity: a good story, told without fuss or flourish, and with the assurance of someone who knows what he's doing on every page." YVONNE ZIPP

Los Angeles Times ***

"Plot wise, this is the narrative equivalent of ambling along a country road. Earley keeps things simple, and that means that issues such as teen pregnancy, racism, class and Pearl Harbor are explored slightly but not fully dealt with." CARMELA CIURARU

CRITICAL SUMMARY

When Jim the Boy was published in 2000, a few reviewers dismissed it as retrograde nostalgia. More, however, praised it for its realistic, understated depiction of an earlier way of life. The Blue Star, which neither idealizes nor condemns this past world, is a worthy sequel--a sort of children's book for adults. The New York Times Book Review even suggested that its appeal may have to do with 9/11, after which "Americans [showed] an appetite for simple tales told with becoming directness." Certainly, The Blue Star contains no postmodern flourishes; nor does it delve very deeply into its complex themes of class, sex, race, and patriotism. Still, Tony Earley, an English professor at Vanderbilt University, adeptly captures character, landscape, and emotion in seemingly simple, alluring prose. Critics noted a few sappy scenes, but The Blue Star succeeds, overall, as a sensitive coming-of-age story. And with Jim's adult fate undetermined, readers can look forward to seeing more of him.

***

The Flowers

By Dagoberto Gilb

An urban coming-of-age story.

Sonny Bravo is a smart, tough Mexican-American teenager growing up in an unnamed city (think Los Angeles). In his spare time, he breaks into other people's homes just to see how they live. However, his freedom has limits because his mother's new husband keeps him busy as an unpaid handyman and janitor at his small apartment complex. As he completes each day's repetitive and mindless tasks, he gets to know the other residents, including an albino used car salesman, a lonely drug dealer's wife, and a beautiful, innocent Mexican immigrant. As racial conflict and violence simmer around him, Sonny tries to figure out how to determine right and wrong in a world full of moral gray areas.

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Grove. 256 pages. $24. ISBN: 0802118593

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Gilb presents the anguish, the dread, the work, the antagonisms and violence and unrealistic hopes of the people who teeter always and each day on the edge of financial and physical ruin. ... The events portrayed in the novel--the violence, the racism, the sordid beauty and the sadness--these things are just the norm for sonny. and that's what makes the book so powerful." ERIC MILES WILLIAMSON

Dallas Morning News ****

"The Flowers is a tightly woven narrative about a boy coming of age in a community bubbling with racial tension. It's beautifully rendered in part because Mr. Gilb nails the voice of 15-year-old narrator sonny Bravo with pinpoint accuracy." BEATRIZ TERRAZAS

San Diego Union Tribune ****

"In his engaging new novel ... Dagoberto Gilb, creates a small, original world of imperfect characters, some of whom linger long after the story ends. ... Reading this captivating, deceptively compact novel is like having a nimble, well-informed guide on a journey into sonny Bravo's contradictory, multidimensional, multicultural self." SARA LEWIS

Cleveland Plain Dealer ****

"The Flowers may surprise readers of Gilb's earlier work--notable for a harsh, eloquent realism--with its sweetness. Though his circumstances keep the epiphanies small, Sonny's faith in the power of love never deserts him, and it motivates every crucial action he takes." JOHN REPP

Houston Chronicle ****

"The Flowers ... is laced with humor and tenderness and, in the end, a sense of hope. Because many of the funny lines are in Spanish, it helps to know the language or have an inkling of Spanglish." DAVID D. MEDINA

San Antonio Exp-News ****

"After a sort of rough start, The Flowers evolves into classic Gilb, where one square block is the whole world for his characters, and there is so much tension simmering under the surface that the thing is almost uncomfortable to read. ... The sidebar racial tension and battles between civilians and police and civilians and each other serve to make the novel richer than just a coming-of-age story." JULIE ANN VERA

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Dagoberto Gilb, winner of the PEN/Hemmingway award for his 1994 short story collection The Magic of Blood, hasn't written a novel since The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuna (1994). With The Flowers, he has blazed back onto the literary scene. Once again, he earns rave reviews from critics who universally praised his ability to capture the rhythms of working-class life and speech. A slow start and a much-too-sophisticated Sonny distracted a few critics, but these were minor complaints. Though Gilb's newest novel deals poignantly with matters of race, the Dallas Morning News expressed an opinion echoed by many other reviewers about the widespread applicability of The Flower's themes: "Let's hope Mr. Gilb's book isn't pegged solely as Latino literature. The issues it explores are universally relevant in our shrinking world."

****

The Invention of Everything Else

By Samantha Hunt

Electric blues.