Literary.

Shortly before Nikola Tesla's death in 1943, a young chambermaid named Louisa spies on and then be-friends the eccentric inventor, who is living at the Hotel New Yorker. Louisa's father, assisted by a mysterious mechanic who may be from the future, hopes to use a time machine to visit his deceased wife. Woven into Louisa's story are episodes from the Serbian-born inventor's life, including his apprenticeship under Edison (later a bitter rival), the world's inexplicable failure to credit him for the invention of radio, and the Nobel Committee's decision to withdraw his prize in physics. New York of the 1940s provides a backdrop for what becomes an exploration of the celibate Tesla's life and an unusual examination of love.

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Houghton Mifflin. 272 Pages. $24. ISBN: 061880112X

Oregonian *****

"[Hunt] set[s] the truth spinning in a world of imagination, and in doing so create[s] an electrified, magnetized concoction that pleases, teases and dazzles. ... Hunt's poetic capabilities are enormous, her flight of words up to the task of taking us where she wants us to go." ALICE EVANS

Rocky Mountain News *****

"The Invention of Everything Else covers an ambitious new territory that is part science, part biography and part history. At times, Hunt's writing is experimental, as Tesla's work was, and her book is a literary invention that succeeds in resurrecting one of the world's greatest inventors who may have otherwise been left forgotten." TRACI J. MACNAMARA

Los Angeles Times ****

"Tesla's story ... is crafted with an intensity bordering on love--an intensity that makes the heart beat faster and the blood race and the serotonin find its optimum level. ... Hunt reinvents him as a man who might have created a machine that could guarantee love's immortality, not just the immortality of human beings." SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Told in alternating chapters between Louisa's story--in the third person--and tesla's--in the first person--the novel is equal parts Louisa's awakening and Tesla's demise. ... [The novel] loses some of its force in the second half as Hunt delves into Tesla's strained, loveless personal life." LINDA BURNETT

Washington Post ****

"The story is a Rube Goldberg contraption of history, slapstick, biography and science fiction: a narrative bricolage that looks too precarious to work but is too alluring to resist." RON CHARLES

Chicago Tribune ***

"The facts of tesla's life are fascinating, and while there's a certain unwieldiness to the plot, and places where the language strains too hard, it's hard not to conclude that Hunt had her heart in the right place with this book, that her highest concerns are with wonder and love, with questions of survival." BETH KEPHART

Chicago Sun Times ***

"[T]he story feels less like converging plot threads than neighboring encyclopedia entries. Hunt's ambition and depth of research is evident on every page, but the novel lacks a compelling story to match." MARK ATHITAKIS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Hunt's sophomore novel entranced most critics. Hunt (The Seas, 2006), who received the National Book Foundation's first "5 under 35" Award for gifted young writers, weaves together the unbelievable facts of Tesla's life with some unbelievable fictions of her own creation. The result is a gripping, outlandish, and, at times, tragic story. A few critics found the plot clumsy and the language overly precious, but the majority praised Hunt for her articulate, even poetic, portrayal of a fascinating genius and the times in which he lived. Tesla, who invented radio, florescent lighting, X-rays, radar, and much more, is a man to whom the modern world owes a great debt that was not repaid during his lifetime. The Invention of Everything Else does this great man justice.

****

Knockemstiff

By Donald Ray Pollock

A town's rotten soul.

Knockemstiff, Ohio, is a bleak, rural town that America forgot--a town rich in violence, depravity, and bloodshed. In these 18 linked stories that span the mid-1960s to the late 1990s, Pollock introduces the town's down-and-out characters--degenerate sex addicts, drugged-out criminals, fornicating siblings, and murderers--all thwarted by life's offerings. In "Hair's Fate," an abusive father punishes his son for having sex with his sister's doll by chopping off his hair with a butcher knife. "Giganthomachy" features a woman who begs her son to pretend to be the Boston Strangler. As one character admits, "It's the same for most of us; forgetting our lives might be the best we'll ever do."

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Doubleday. 224 pages. $22.95. ISBN: 0385523823

Los Angeles Times *****

"Knockemstiff is a powerful, remarkable, exceptional book that is very hard to read. ... [Pollock] makes no judgments, and that's one of his great strengths."

DIANA WAGMAN

Uoregonian *****

"He draws his readers in slowly, tangling them in the mundane toil of small-town life, before smacking them upside the head with something unexpected and primal. ... For as wretched and thwarted as its inhabitants may be, Knockemstiff had me captivated, and I couldn't wait to return each day." SHARON MARTELL

Minneapolis Star Tribune ****

"[R]eaders needn't share Pollock's bleak perspective to fall under the spell of this book's heady mix of grime, action and suicidal tendencies." CHERIE PARKER

NY Times Book Review ****

"False notes are rare, Pollock's voice is fresh and full-throated, and while these stories travel negligible distances, even from one another, the best of them leave an indelible smear. ... Grace barely flickers across these pages, but when it is sensed, Pollock's characters almost invariably reject it, surrendering to nihilism, trying to forget they ever had a chance." JONATHAN MILES

USA Today ****

"The stories are grim, drenched in sorrow and regret. But the writing is vivid, spare and powerful." BOB MINZESHEIMER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics agree that Knockemstiff is an outstanding debut, one born of experience. Pollock, who grew up in Knockemstiff, dropped out of high school to work in a meatpacking plant and then worked for 30 years in a paper mill. He turned to writing after he quit "drinking and drugging" and enrolled in the MFA program at Ohio State University. His eponymous town serves as the same binding force as Winesburg, Ohio, does in Sherwood Anderson's story cycle, but Knockemstiff is an uglier, more grotesque place, with oozing sores visible everywhere. Critics commend that Pollock, despite his dark themes, suspends judgment and, in spare, graphic prose reminiscent of Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy, portrays his characters with wit and empathy. This powerful collection may be an uncomfortable read--but it's worth every second.

****

A Person of Interest

By Susan Choi

Personalizing terrorism.

Lee, a Chinese emigre and mathematics professor in the Midwest, comes under suspicion when a mail bomb explodes in the office next door, seriously wounding a star computer scientist. (Think Unabomber and Wen Ho Lee.) As Lee, who expresses no regret for the injuries inflicted on his more popular colleague, acts increasingly suspicious, the FBI targets him as a person of interest. Lee then receives a disturbing letter from an old friend--perhaps a connection to the bombing--and starts to recall his graduate school days and two failed marriages. Lee soon becomes an object of persecution by a vigilant community and by hyperactive media, and questions about exile, alienation, paranoia, and identity arise.

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Viking. 356 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0670018465

NY Times Book Review *****

"The question of who did it is ultimately less compelling than the character who clearly didn't. We read a person of Interest for one of the best reasons to read any fiction: to transcend the limitations of our own lives, to find out what it's like to be someone else, to recognize unmistakable aspects of ourselves staring back at us from the portrait of a stranger." FRANCINE PROSE

Chicago Sun-Times ****

"What choi's book does so well is deliver a sense of the complexity of being a foreigner in a country in which diversity is part of the official program but often suspect. ... A person of Interest is an inquiry into social marginalization." CARLO WOLFF

Washington Post ****

"[Choi's] merciless knowledge of [Lee], her sardonic analysis of his anxiety, his shame and his compulsive jealousy result in a cringe-inducing performance, a tour de force." RON CHARLES

Los Angeles Times ****

"With a mystery writer's flair for suspense, Choi juxtaposes flashbacks of Lee's early years as an immigrant and graduate student with the FBI investigation of the bombing, interleaving seemingly random events until we realize how Lee's past, both personal and academic, has come to bear on his present." MARISA SILVER

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Perhaps what is most compelling--and disturbing--about Choi's novel is the way the small community contributes to this culture of suspicion. ... Readers may be unsatisfied with the revelation of the bomber's identity, though the novel does suggest that there is no way to accurately predict which social outsider may choose to lethally express his dismay." MATT SHEARS

USA Today ***

"Lee's cold and sanctimonious persona and his unattractive habit of being jealous of everyone he encounters prevent him from becoming a genuinely sympathetic character in this otherwise fascinating novel." CAROL MEMMOTT

CRITICAL SUMMARY