Review by New York Times Review
THE END OF PLENTY: The Race to Feed a Crowded World, by Joel K. Bourne Jr. (Norton, $16.95.) The world's population is on track to outpace the food supplies on which it depends for survival - a catastrophe that Malthus famously predicted in a seminal essay in the late 1700s, well before the advent of agricultural developments that have accelerated food production. Bourne, an environmental journalist, outlines the efforts of farmers and scientists around the world who are attempting to right the balance. THE SEASON OF MIGRATION, by Nellie Hermann. (Picador, $16.) Hermann's novel focuses on 10 months of Vincent van Gogh's life, starting in 1878, when he ministered to a small mining town in Belgium. His ecclesiastical career stalled, but his time among the miners exposed him to an emotional clarity that later influenced his paintings. The book "is best apprehended not as a conventional novel but as a portrait of a crisis," our reviewer, Leah Hager Cohen, wrote. MULTIPLE CHOICE, by Alejandro Zambra. Translated by Megan McDowell. (Penguin, $15.) Zambra's earlier collection of short stories, "My Documents," showed the author "knows how to turn the familiar inside out, but he also knows how to wrap us up in it," Natasha Wimmer wrote here. This present book, written in the format of a standardized test, is based on the national aptitude tests Chilean students take before applying to universities and poses a series of questions with no right answers. NUMERO ZERO, by Umberto Eco. Translated by Richard Dixon. (Mariner, $14.95.) Colonna, the struggling ghostwriter at the heart of this story, is transfixed by a juicy scoop: that Mussolini was not killed by partisans in 1945, as most believe, but instead survived in hiding. This sly satire, borrowing from outrageous real-life Italian politics, features a larger-than-life leader, conspiracy theories and an almost-corrupt press. DEAR MR. YOU, by Mary-Louise Parker. (Scribner, $16.) This epistolary work is composed of a series of unsent letters addressed to men, fictional and real, from various periods in the author's life. Her recipients include an amalgam of three bad boyfriends folded into a composite character called Cerberus; in another letter, addressed to a future boyfriend for her daughter, she writes, "Make her drunk on happy." CITY ON FIRE, by Garth Risk Hallberg. (Vintage, $17.) Artists and lost children are at the heart of this sprawling debut novel, which our reviewer, Frank Rich, called a "Dickens-size descent" into a bygone New York in the late 1970s, with the citywide blackout in 1977 as a centerpiece of the story. HOLD STILL: A Memoir With Photographs, by Sally Mann. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $18.99.) The photographer, known for intimate images of her children, reflects on her Southern childhood and upbringing and the call to photography, weaving her drawings and other works into this lyrical account.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
In her first book, an epistolary memoir of sorts, Parker addresses letters to men she's known or, in some cases, would like to know. It's a bold, powerful, and decidedly non-Hollywood exercise, arranged more or less temporally. Letters to young lovers Risk Taker and Popeye appear before letters to the mentor who changed her acting life or the doctor who saved her life long after that. Somewhere in the middle, three abusive former boyfriends are forced to share a letter to Dear Cerberus. Many letters are mysterious but no less readable for the fact that readers aren't totally in on Parker's connection to the You she addresses: her poet's prose is lyrical, funny, sad, strange, and very often beautiful. And, of course, each letter paints a fuller picture of its author, who has previously written for Esquire and other magazines. Letters to Parker's beloved, deceased father, who figures prominently throughout; her son; and the uncle of the daughter she adopted are especially touching. Yes, she's a writer, too.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actress Parker, winner of Tony and Emmy awards, brings her talent for words to the page in this epistolary collection as she recounts scenes from her life through the men who have influenced her, for better or worse. In a letter to her late father, she writes of his time as a soldier in the Philippines in WWII, where he was shot, barely making it out alive. Decades later, he takes the family to Europe when he can't afford it because Parker's plans to make the trip with friends fell through. He's a father who stands up for his child when the librarian thinks Parker has lied about how many books she's read, and she sees him in her young son as he defends her against another woman's insults. In a warm tribute to her accountant, Abraham, who becomes a lifelong friend (the kind of person who goes to his office on his day off to get her son's passport), she recounts their first meeting when she was a 20-something broke mess (she is now 50) and fell asleep on his office couch. Parker has a raw and powerful apology for the cab driver she cursed out when pregnant and on her own, during dark days when she hadn't been leaving the house. When he tells her to get out of the cab because he "doesn't want her anymore," Parker, in so much emotional pain it "hurts to breathe," can barely utter, "No one does." Like her performances, some of her recollections and interpretations come across as unusual, but there are also many lovely moments touched with grace and beauty. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This is not your ordinary Hollywood memoir: no script doctor or publicist seems to have embellished or sanitized Tony/Emmy/Obie/Golden Globe-winning actress Parker's first book. Written as a series of letters to almost three dozen "Mr."s both real and imagined, Parker's work captures past experiences -some lasting moments, others lingering forever-from her life thus far. Her strongest letters have to do with family: a grandfather she never met, her father, the orderly at the hospital after the birth of her son, the "future man who loves my daughter," the "oyster picker" who provides one of her father's final meals. Her most memorable encounter involves "Mr. Cabdriver" in whose New York taxi she barely moves a few blocks, but with whom she unintentionally shares some of her most raw, vulnerable, heart-piercing loneliness. That Parker chooses to narrate her own words guarantees the most outstanding, most accurate aural experience. Listeners also hear Parker's two young children voice their own lines. VERDICT With implacable authenticity, Parker's life in epistolary snippets reveals a portrait of an artist as a young woman, lover, mother, daughter, and all-around fabulous performer. ["This title is a reminder that our encounters with others shape and take up their due place in our lives, so long as we pay attention. Memoir readers, storytellers and lovers, striving artists, letter writers, and dreamers will enjoy": LJ 10/15/15 review of the Scribner hc.]-Terry Hong, -Smithsonian BookDragon, -Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An award-winning actress's collection of never-sent literary missives to the men who have most influenced her personal development. In this accomplished debut, Parker, who has won Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe awards, traces her life story through a series of essays that she addresses to the "manly creature[s]" who have made her into the woman she is. Her first letters are to male members of her immediate family, including her grandfather and father. Both anchored her to a family heritage, and both are individuals in whom she catches glimpses of herself and her children. From there, Parker radiates outward to others, such as the "Yacqui Indian Boy" and the "Risk Taker" singing star, who gave her glimpses of worlds that existed beyond the small town she knew growing up. Like the Indian Boy and the Risk Taker, her addressees are often men who educated her in ways she never expected. A college "movement teacher" who gave Parker a negative evaluation of her work and self-presentation not only taught her the wisdom of "[l]etting someone you don't really like surprise you," but also an important lesson in humility. Some, like the three men she collectively refers to as Cerberus, taught her to value herself through the hard lessons in mistreatment they gave her. Others, like the nameless New York City cab driver upon whom she heaped unmerited blame and abuse, become the objects of apology and of musings on who she was at particular moments in time. Still others, like "Gorgeous" and "Oyster Picker," are creations of the author's fertile imagination and express, on the one hand, her longings for the perfect man and reconnection with her beloved dead father on the other. Parker's missives move effortlessly among nostalgia, intensity, and playfulness, but in the end, they all work together to reveal both the small and large ways in which we impact each other. A unique, poised, and polished first book from a respected actress. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
