It’s time for a new issue of Shiny New Books, packed with features, competitions, book news and reviews. With lots of contributions from a wide variety of bloggers and authors, it’s well worth a look and if you haven’t come across it yet I suggest you get yourself on over there. My own contribution to this issue is a review of Marc Bojanowski’s Journeyman, a state of the nation novel which manages to pack a clear-eyed view of America in 2007 – teetering on the brink of the financial crash – into just over one hundred and seventy pages. Here’s a little taster:
There’s something very attractive about a state of the nation novel. It offers the chance to examine a snapshot of a country, taking in the many forces at play that make up its society at a particular point in its history. Recent events have provoked a rash of them – John Lanchester’s Capital, Jonathan Coe’s Number 11, Justin Cartwright’s Other People’s Money, Blake Morrison’s South of the River – to name but a few. Nothing new, of course: George Eliot’s Middlemarch is perhaps one of the finest ‘state of the nation’ novels in British fiction. Marc Bojanaowski’s Journeyman follows in that long literary tradition offering us a portrait of the USA through the eyes of Nolan Jackson, an itinerant carpenter and self-styled modern cowboy…
If you’d like to read more you’ll find the full review here.
I’m not familiar with Shiny New Books’ newsletter. I’ll have to go and take a peek 🙂
Oh, Janet – you must. A whole website to explore, including back issues.
That’s a coincidence, shiny new books just followed me on Twitter, I hadn’t heard of them before. I must go and look up the website.
I hope you like it, Sandra. Lots to explore!
I just found your site via your review on Shiny New Books – and I’m glad. I’m looking forward to receiving your posts!
Very pleased that you found the blog, Debbie, and I hope you discovered lots of other things to enjoy over at Shiny!