Geoff Rodkey: Lights Out in Lincolnwood (A Novel)

Lights Out in Lincolnwood – A Novel – Geoff Rodkey – HarperCollins – 9780063065925 – Paperback – 544 pages – $16.99 – ebook versions available at lower prices

I have to admit that I did not expect to really like this book anywhere near as much as I did. I’ve certainly read my share of suburban based stories that wittily poke fun at modern life. But Geoff Rodkey surprised me with Lights Out in Lincolnwood and I found myself reading it every day in big chunks – the kind of book that is dangerous to my sleep as I can’t stop reading. Like eating dried fruit. Except that I did not regret it later.

Today’s world seems to encourage writers to imagine the worst about our future – this book does that for sure. But Rodkey keeps us from getting depressed with humor, even as he tells us the truth about ourselves and our illusions we like to carry around about how we would act under pressure.

And there is not much more pressure one can imagine than the story Rodkey tells here, as an unexplained collapse of our infrastructure suddenly happens. By focusing on a single family and its community, Rodkey is able to bring the whole story down to a practical level, as his characters, whom we readily recognize, go through an almost Marxian (that’s Marx Brothers by the way) experience that readers can’t help laugh at and simultaneously shudder about. It is frighteningly close to home.

How do we survive calamity when we have no idea how to do anything that is needed to survive and the tools we need don’t work and the neighbors we thought we knew turn into completely different people – or maybe reveal themselves for whom they really are, at last.

The entire book takes place during an action packed and tension filled four days – chaos, change, fear, hysteria, and perhaps even joy mark the struggle of the Altman family as they try to determine how to live in a world without technology. They struggle with getting food and water, their modern past-times and addictions, neighbors who become militaristic and brutal, and the town’s looting of the local Whole Foods is the least of the craziness they have to contend with as they try to figure out just what is going on and how they will manage to get through a worldwide catastrophe.

It’s impossible to not be captivated by this book. It was fun to read and to talk to Geoff, and I know it made a difference as its story line and characters have stayed with me long after I finished reading the book. We had a terrific time talking for Writerscast about this book and Geoff’s work as a writer in various media.

Geoff Rodkey is the New York Times best-selling author of ten children’s books, including the Tapper Twins and Chronicles of Egg series; We’re Not From Here; and Marcus Makes a Movie, a collaboration with actor Kevin Hart. He’s also the Emmy-nominated screenwriter of Daddy Day Care and RV, among other films. Geoff lives in New York City with his family.

In particular, We’re Not From Here, A sci-fi comedy for middle grade readers about a family of humans who immigrate to an alien planet after Earth is destroyed (written for middle grade readers) looks like another fun Rodkey story.

Author website here.

Buy the book here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Brook Simons: Nothing to Write Home About

Nothing to Write Home About – Brook Simons – 9781626468702 – Booklocker – paperback – 232 pages – $16.95 – April 15, 2014 – ebook available at lower prices

In her late twenties, in 1977, Brook Simons picked up stakes and moved to Los Angeles from Connecticut, where she grew up on a farm in a small town, which happens to be right next door to where I grew up. While Brook and I did not know each other in Connecticut, she ended up marrying an old friend of mine from Yale, who also moved to LA to start a new life just after Brook did.  So while we have never met, I felt a connection to this book from the outset.

Brook’s memoir is one of the bravest and rawest pieces of personal nonfiction I have ever read. I think the word insouciant fits who Brook was during the time of this story, which coincides with the rise of the drug fueled stand up comedians who gathered in Los Angeles around the Comedy Club and television studios of Hollywood in an anxiety and angst ridden explosion of personal exposure. Not all of the funny stuff was really funny, and the mostly male community of comics was pretty solidly male-centered and frankly not only self loathing and self degrading, but extremely misogynistic.

In some ways, brash young Brook fit in with this crew, as her story shows us so evocatively and painfully. She loved the energy, the drugs, and the comedy, but she also became attached to one of the comedians with whom she developed a highly dysfunctional and brutal relationship that ultimately led her to the brink of disaster on many levels.

There really is a lot to write home about here, and Brook writes it well. I don’t want to give away the story in any form. I think you should listen to our conversation and then read the book to understand the story Brook is telling on herself toward showing how danger and power can seduce us, take us beyond the places that are safe, and sometimes cause damage that goes far beyond what anyone should be able to experience. It’s a story that antedates #MeToo, but which ought to be required reading for every woman and man who cares about changing the power relationships between male and female in a positive way.

I was really stunned by this book and hope you will find this interview of interest, along with the book itself. You can buy it from my friends at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut. Support independent bookselling and order Nothing to Write Home About here.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Lorna Landvik: Best to Laugh

978-0-816698-97-4 – University of Minnesota Press – Paperback- 312 pages  – $16.95 (ebook editions available at lower prices)

I have been reading and enjoying Lorna Landvik’s wonderfully funny books for a long time. I can’t remember how I discovered her writing but am guessing it might be the fact that she is from Minnesota that got me to try out one of her early books. And then since her books so perfectly capture the Minnesota social landscape and ethos, I kept going and read most of her novels. I come by my Minnesota interest because part of my family is from Minnesota, and I lived in St. Paul for a few years in the seventies, and I maintain a strong interest in the North Country and especially its literary life (oh and their baseball team too — see my recent interview with former Minnesota Twin Jim Kaat).

I suspect Landvik gets typecast by many readers as a “women’s” writer – her books are rich with female characters and speak to and for women’s social ethos. And in a book business that lives and dies by book categorization, maybe she is typecast also because her books are funny, and have titles that sound like they come from a female centric universe (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Your Oasis on Flame Lake, Patty Jane’s House of Curl). But it’s a mistake for any reader to overlook Landvik as there is a lot going on in these books. Landvik is certainly entertaining – her background as a stand up comedian and actor informs her writing and her stories. But comedians and comedic novelists are usually mining something deeper, and Landvik’s humor leverages a clear understanding of human nature and both our fallibility and the strength that allows us to live through pain and grief and the difficulties of daily life.

Best to Laugh is Landvik’s most recent novel, published last year by the adventurous University of Minnesota Press. It’s her most autobiographical novel, for sure. Her main character in this book, Candy Pekkala is half Korean and half Norwegian (unlike Landvik). She goes to Hollywood to follow her dream to be a stand up comedian (as Landvik did). The book follows her adventures in La-La land as she falls in with her neighbors in Peyton Hall, a class LA building that houses a cast of interesting and compelling characters, who all become Candy’s family as she becomes the success she has aimed to become. The combination of “old Hollywood” and less romantic 70’s era Los Angeles makes for a terrific backdrop. And the characters are picture perfect. Candy, her friends and family are impossible to resist.

In real life, Landvik did work as a stand up comedian in Los Angeles, temping at places like Atlantic Records and the Playboy Mansion (writing film reviews for Hugh Hefner’s private VHS tape collection) while pursuing her showbiz dream. Despite her success as a comedian, Landvik eventually turned to writing, which she turned out to be pretty good at doing. She still likes to perform – her ‘Party in the Rec Room’ is performed once a year at the wonderful Bryant Lake Bowl theater in Minneapolis (yes, theater in a bowling alley!) This is an all-improvised show based on audience suggestion. Landvik describes it this way “While I enjoy a meaty, dramatic role, to me there’s nothing more satisfying than making a roomful of people snort beer up their noses as they laugh.”

You might find yourself doing the same while reading Best to Laugh.

Author website here. Author page, on Goodreads, worth a visit.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Lois Banner: Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox

978-1608195312 – Bloomsbury USA – Hardcover – $30.00 (ebook editions available, prices vary)

Marilyn Monroe was one of the great icons of mid-century America.  I grew up while she was in her prime in the late fifties and the early sixties, and the power of her image and beauty was available even to me as a pre-pubescent youth.  Her cultural appeal was remarkable.  But the complexity of her persona was equally powerful, and certainly enabled her incredible charisma and appeal.

Her marriages to the equally iconic Joe DiMaggio and the brilliant playwright Arthur Miller, and rumors of her romantic liaisons to many other well known public figures added to the mythological elements of her story.  And her undeniable skill as a comic actress and amazing on screen sexuality were unmatched by any other actor of her time.  That she died relatively young, and in mysterious and controversial circumstances only added to the ongoing fascination with her life that continues a half century later.

Marilyn biographies (and exploitive tell-alls) abound.  But no biographer has done what feminist scholar Lois Banner has done in Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox.  This is a complex and in-depth examination of a complex and challenging subject.  Through exhaustive research and access to previously unavailable sources, Banner tells the story of Marilyn’s life in incredible (and never boring) detail, begins=ning at the outset of Marilyn’s difficult life and through to her sad and tragic death at age 36.  We learn a tremendous amount about Marilyn, as a person, an actress, a thoughtful and well read intellectual, a star with a created narrative, a lover of men and of women, and in many ways a proto-feminist figure.

Reading this book, I found myself thinking about the distinctions in human nature that enables some of us to use personal challenges to grow and to create ourselves into powerful beings, while others simply suffer.  But most of all, the sheer loneliness and pain of being that beset Marilyn are overwhelming to contemplate.  Reading Banner’s recounting of her final weeks and days is an incredibly painful experience.  And it was eye-opening for me to understand that the circumstances of her death are likely not as most of us have believed, a suicide.

This is really a powerful story, and one that I recommend to readers who may not have felt themselves interested in the details of Marilyn Monroe’s life.  This is a serious biography about a serious and important life, and one that is well deserving of the powerful telling Banner has given to Marilyn.  You can learn more at the author’s website. I really enjoyed talking to Ms. Banner and wished we had more time available to talk together about this book.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download