Literary fiction Archives - Page 4 of 5

Get to know Jamaican American author, Donna Hemans

We’ve been working with Donna Hemans, a wonderful Jamaican American writer who is gaining visibility in the literary world. Her new novel, TEA BY THE SEA is a story of a family uniting and unraveling told seamlessly and with smart, clear prose. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, TEA BY THE SEA traces Plum Valentine’s circuitous route to find her daughter and the child’s father, who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. Instead, Plum finds herself locked in his church with her daughter and by the time it’s all over, Plum is the one in the back seat of a police car facing charges. TEA BY THE SEA is a poignant, multilayer story, that is beautifully written and touches on so many important and relevant issues including immigration, family secrets, mother-daughter relationships, parental kidnapping , betrayal and motherhood.

The novel has received some great attention. Donna was interviewed on Zibby Owens’ popular, Mom’s Don’t Have Time To Read Books podcast, the book was included in The New York Post’s “Best Books of the Week,” and The Rumpus ran an engaging interview with Donna called “An Exploration of Belonging.” Donna’s original essays have also recently appeared in Electric Literature: I Can Only Save My Grandparents’ Home by Preserving It in Fiction and in Ms. Magazine: Picking Meat From Tiny Bones: Coping with Coronavirus, Isolation and Aging Parents.

The bloggers also love TEA BY THE SEA. Check out the blog tour’s full schedule of reviews, interviews and more:

My Mother’s Son by David Hirshberg

FigTree Books LLC, publisher of the best literature of the American Jewish experience, has published My Mother’s Son, a debut novel by David Hirshberg.

The story is told by a radio raconteur revisiting his past in post-World War II Boston, the playground and battleground for two brothers whose lives are transformed by discoveries they never could have imagined. From the opening line of the book, “When you’re a kid, they don’t always tell you the truth,” the stage is set for this riveting coming-of-age story that plays out against the backdrop of the Korean War, the aftermath of the Holocaust, the polio epidemic, the relocation of a baseball team, and the shenanigans of politicians and businessmen. Hirshberg deftly weaves together events, characters, and clues and creates a rich tapestry of betrayal, persecution, death,loyalty, and unconditional love that resonates with today’s America.

My Mother’s Son has received impressive accolades, including:

Gold Medal, 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards, RegionalFiction
Winner, 2018 National Indie Excellence Awards, Best RegionalFiction,
Winner, two New York City Big Book Awards:Historical Fiction and Debut Fiction.

It has also received strong review coverage including a starred review in both Booklist and Library Journal and:

The Jewish Book Council

The Jewish Advocate (Boston)

The Washington Jewish Week

The Reporter Group

Too Jewish Radio Podcast

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Jerome Charyn’s New Novel About Jerzy Kosinksi is Getting a lot of Attention

Critically acclaimed author, Jerome Charyn is getting a lot of attention for his new novel, JERZY that is just out from Bellevue Literary Press.

In JERZY, Jerome Charyn lends his unmistakable style to this most American story of personal disintegration, told through the voices of multiple narrators—a homicidal actor, a dominatrix, and Joseph Stalin’s daughter—who each provide insights into the shifting facets of Kosinski’s personality. The story unfolds like a Russian nesting doll, eventually revealing the lost child beneath layers of trauma, while touching on the nature of authenticity, the atrocities of WWII, the allure of sadomasochism, and the fickleness of celebrity.

Ruth Franklin wrote this great review and fascinating article for The New Yorker in which she describes the book as “a moving attempt to trace the connections between Kosinski’s wartime struggles and postwar fictions.

Benjamin Markovits in his review for The New York Times Book Review writes that JERZY is “a novel with a light touch that’s still capable of lifting heavy subjects. Charyn knows what he wants to do and knows how to do it.”

And JERZY was included in Jane Ciabattari’s 5 Books Making News This Week column for LitHub for the week of April 4th.

If you are looking for an intriguing and engaging book to read this Spring, add JERZY by Jerome Charyn to your list. This reader’s guide will also help make it an excellent choice for your next book club selection.

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EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET receives rave reviews from Irish and mainstream press

We’ve been fans of Eamon Loingsigh’s writing for some time now. We had the privilege to work on his debut novel, LIGHT OF THE DIDDICOY, and now we’re excited to be helping to spread the word regarding his new work, EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET.

Reviews are starting to come in, and the Irish press, indy press — ALL the press — are loving this new novel. Check out what they have to say:

“In his beautiful, passionate prose, Loingsigh — an Irishman himself — continually reminds us of the motherland and the suffering of Irish emigrants. . . . EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET is a gangster story that reads more like “Robin Hood” than The Godfather because of these men’s inner strength and the love they have for each other. . . .
It’s also an intimate look at criminals whose lives have been hardened by oppression and weathered by storms, while inside their rough shells they hide soft hearts.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books

“When accomplished Irish American writers address the lives and experiences of the early 20th century Irish in New York they are recording, but also in a deeper sense also reclaiming a lost heritage. This is painstaking work that’s worth celebrating in its own right, but then to give us a vivid portrait of these flinty people in all their complexity and courage is a thing to cheer about. EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET, author Eamon Loingsigh’s new novel, is a follow up to Light of the Diddicoy, and it’s a high wire act of creativity and reclamation that deserves the widest possible audience.”

—Irish Central“

Loingsigh has an urgent story to tell. And he tells it well. This is a street-level history of how the other half has always lived, the kind of story rarely worried over in classrooms or political campaigns. Loingsigh’s great strength is his unsentimental take on the immigrant experience which—despite the rancor of today’s debate—often acquires a sepia tone when it is discussed in the past tense. EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET should be required reading for those who rail about how today’s immigrants “refuse to assimilate.”
–Brooklyn Rail

[EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET], a follow-up to his previous gripping novel The Light of the Diddicoy, is set on the rough-and-tumble streets in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, where Irish and Italian immigrants fight fiercely for control of the docks and all the jobs and money that comes with that control…On the surface, Loingsigh’s book mines Brooklyn’s gory and glorious Irish past. But it is also the quintessential read for 21st century Brooklyn. Not only is it all too plausible that Liam McGarrity’s grandchildren are cops of firefighters living in Marine Park. But consider all of those immigrants coming into Brooklyn these days. Love? Death? Money? Struggles in the homeland? Surely they can relate to a thing or two Liam had to endure as he was becoming an American in Brooklyn.

—Irish Voice

More reviews to come soon!

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Discover Jay Neugeboren

For those who enjoy Philip Roth, you should read one of Jay Neugeboren’s novels. He has had two published in the last six months — The Other Side of the World (Two Dollar Radio; December 2012) and The American Sun & Wind Moving Picture Company (Texas Tech University Press; March 2013). He has been compared to Philip Roth (The Washington Post) and John Updike (Kirkus Reviews) and has been called, “one of our most honored writers of literary fiction” by The Los Angeles Times. Learn more about this great writer by reading a recent interview he did with The Jewish Book Council: http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/_blog/The_ProsenPeople/post/beth-kissileff-interviews-jay-neugeboren/

Get to know Jamaican American author, Donna Hemans

The Livre Café | 6/1

Book of Cinz | 6/8

Suzy Approved Book Reviews | 6/14

Gail Renatta | 6/21

Beth’s Book Nook Blog | 6/28

My Mother’s Son by David Hirshberg

Jerome Charyn’s New Novel About Jerzy Kosinksi is Getting a lot of Attention

EXILE ON BRIDGE STREET receives rave reviews from Irish and mainstream press

More reviews to come soon!

Discover Jay Neugeboren

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