Reading Room

in Full Bloom
A young woman blossoms under loving care. In Vanessa Diffenbaughs fascinating debut novel, The language of flowers (Ballantine), jaded 18-year-old Victoria Jones strikes out on her own after a lifetime in foster homes. her present is juxtaposed with childhood scenes of the years she lived with Elizabeth, a vineyard owner who introduced her to the Victorian-era language of flowers. That language, once used by lovers to express intimate sentiments, helps Victoria through her troubles, until a chance discovery shakes her fragile sense of id entity. Diffenbaugh, herself a foster mother, clearly knows both the human heart and her plants, and she keeps us rooting for the damaged Victoria, who comes, finally, to understand that the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved [can] grow to give love as lushly as anyone else. arianna davis

Down and Almost Out

Bracing for the storm. Esch Batiste is the only female in the Pit, a hardscrabble patch of bayou country she has shared with her father and three brothers since their mother died in childbirth. Sometimes I think [Daddy] forgets that I am a girl, she muses. But 14-yearold Esch is obviously on the cusp of womanhood; shes pregnant by Manny, a neighbor. As Hurricane Katrina gathers strength in the Gulf of Mexico, Eschs besieged, down-on-itsluck family veers toward disaster. Daddy, who is rarely around, and even more rarely sober, struggles to prepare for the storm, which the others insist will never arrive. Randall, the eldest, jumps and shoots and sweats for a basketball scholarship that hangs tantalizingly close. And Skeetah pins his dreams on his beloved China, a killer pit bull whose pups he hopes will bring cash. In the world of Jesmyn Wards Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA), brutality is the way to success, and tenderness is found only in memories, which throb like the phantom pain Esch imagines Daddy feeling in the missing fingers he lost in an accident. If Wards prose is occasionally overripe, the novels hugeness of heart and fierceness of family feeling grip like Skeetahs pit bull and do not let go. ellen feldman

New York city, 2011.

HArBAcH,

BacK To scHool
Lesson number one: You cant win em all.
iT seems as iF everybody at fictional Westish college is hoping to be chosenby a professional baseball team (freshman henry Skrimshander), a prestigious law school (team captain Mike Schwartz), or a lover (henrys preternaturally calm roommate, owen Dunne; college president Guert Affenlight; his daughter, Pella). But as chad harbachs astonishingly assured yet seemingly effortless novel The Art of fielding (Little, Brown) makes painfully clear, there is simply no such thing as a sure thing. Yes, there are some obviously good movesPutting henry at shortstopwas like taking a painting that had been shoved in a closet and hanging it in the ideal spot. You instantly forgot what the room had looked like beforebut some events cant be controlled. Baseballs go awry, for starters; ditto human expectations, needs, and passions. Youll recognize some of harbachs charactersthe bad-girl teachers daughter who eventually comes home to Daddyand revel in the winningly distinctive ones (owens elegant mother, who thinks shes interested in Guert Affenlight; the dining hall manager who employs and inspires Pella; Mike Schwartz, the not-so-gentle giant). Yes, sport is the metaphor here, but it is only that; this is a wonderful tale of youth, ambition, love, and a little, unpredictable thing called life. in other words, its a whole other ballpark. s.n.
000 oprah.com
september 2011

C l o C k w i s e f r o m r i g h t: P h i l i P f r i e d m a n / s t u d i o d ( 3 ) . b e o w u l f s h e e h a n .