So I'm sticking to my New Year resolutions and trying to once more make headway with my VMCs. As a treat for my first day back at work, I packed one of my new VMCs that I had been eagerly anticipating - The company she keeps by Mary McCarthy. I absolutely loved The group by the same author, and was hoping for more of the same.
However, rather than focussing on the stories of a number of people, this book is very definitely about one individual, Margaret Sargent. And rather than a straightforward story structure, the book is written in a series of vignettes or almost short story episodes which although appearing unrelated do eventually add up to give us a picture of Margaret. The picture isn't terribly likeable - following a marriage breakup, she leads a promiscuous and bohemian lifestyle. It's less of a story and more of a character study which didn't appeal to me in the way that The group had with its gripping story of girls lives.
It's a new Virago, with a new style cover.
re: book review request by award-winning author
ReplyDeleteDear Verity:
I'm an award-winning author with a new book of fiction out last month.
Ugly To Start With is a series of thirteen interrelated stories about
adolescence published by West Virginia University Press.
All the stories in my collection have been previously published in
well-regarded print and online literary magazines such as The Iowa
Review, Passager, The Bitter Oleander, Confrontation, Salt River
Review, The Foliate Oak. and The Cortland Review.
Can I interest you in reviewing it?
If you write me back at johnmcummings@aol.com, I can email you a PDF of my book. If you require a bound copy, please ask, and I will forward your reply to my publisher. Or you can write directly to Abby Freeland at:
Abby.Freeland@mail.wvu.edu
My publisher, I should add, can also offer your readers a free excerpt of my book through a link from your blog to my publisher's website:
http://wvupressonline.com/cummings_ugly_to_start_with_9781935978084
Here’s what Jacob Appel, celebrated author of
Dyads and The Vermin Episode, says about my new collection: "In Ugly to Start With, set in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Cummings tackles the challenges of boyhood adventure and family conflict in a taut, crystalline style that captures the triumphs and tribulations of small-town life. He has a gift for transcending the particular experiences to his characters to capture the universal truths of human affection and suffering--emotional truths that the members of his audience will recognize from their own experiences of childhood and adolescence.”
My short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals, including North American Review, The Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. Twice I have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. My short story "The Scratchboard Project" received an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007.
I am also the author of the nationally acclaimed coming-of-age novel The Night I Freed John Brown (Philomel Books, Penguin Group, 2009), winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers (Grades 7-12) and one of ten books recommended by USA TODAY.
For more information about me, please visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Cummings
Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing back from you.
Kindly,
John Michael Cummings