Van Rossum: Newsletter, May 2006

Beethovenstraat 32 1077 JH Amsterdam Tel. 020-4707077
Beethovenstraat 32 1077 JH Amsterdam Tel. 020-4707077	Welcome to Boekhandel van Rossum’s Electronic English Newsletter October 2006
	There is nothing like spending a Sunday morning with an author whose free association about life sets you to thinking about your own. Siri Hustvedt, author of the spectacular novel What I Loved, has just published a collection of essays in which she explores how the world of the imagination collides with memory to create the landscape of our individual reality. Her reminiscing about a childhood divided between a Norwegian immigrant town in Minnesota and her mother’s village in Norway, her adult life in New York City as a student, wife of Paul Auster, and author creating new realities out of her various geographies is an adventure in language and a remarkable foray into the author’s mind. She writes: “Fiction is like the ghost twin of memory that moves through the myriad cities, landscapes, houses and rooms of the mind.” Entitled Plea for Eros (€ 11,95) the essays are thoughtful and stimulating explorations of early American film, world literature and the need to write – never dry, always linked to her own life. A book to dip into when life needs a moment of “going slow.” And if you haven’t read What I Loved, do so right away! ISBN 0312425538	Description and reviews at Picador Interview with Siri Hustvedt at Identitytheory.com


Nanci Tangeman’s new book, 40 Excuses to Get Together with the Girls, gives women 40 areas to explore – from music (Excuse #2) to everyday technology (Excuse #31) to spirituality (Excuse #21). “I’ve included things that you’d like to do, that you should do and that you’ve always meant to do – if only you had a reason, an excuse,” she says. Then, she’s taken those subjects and put them into a framework that encourages women to get together.	Tash Aw, author of The Harmony Silk Factory, uses three – relatively unreliable – narrators to tell the tale of Johnny Lim, a Chinese Malaysian whose relationship during and after the war to the colonial English, the local Communists, the other Malaysians and the occupying Japanese shifts depending upon which of the three story-tellers is talking. Like the narrators, the reader is missing vital information which prevents us from coming to grips with the personality of Johnny. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “Tash Aw has pulled off a splendid trick. While making the enigma of Johnny more vivid as he goes from one narrator to the next, he has studiously avoided explaining him. Instead…(Aw) uses Johnny’s mystery as a way to illuminate the Malay world around him, even as the man himself disappears inside his contradictions.” Atmospheric and seductive, this compelling and exotic love story lends itself to book clubs who will have endless material for discussion – and differences of opinion. Edition with ISBN 1594481741 has a Reader’s Guide with questions for reading groups (at the bottom of the webpage).	Information on Malaysian history, the English and Japanese occupation and the role of the communist party at Wikipedia.org


	Aminatta Forna’s new book, Ancestor Stones, took me back to my days working in development in West Africa. When Abie returns to her native Sierra Leone to try to reconnect with her family, her aged aunts pass the ancestor stones along to her, recounting tales of the past and demonstrating to their niece how they have managed to quietly shape their own destinies. Wise and magical, the stories help to build bridges between the past and the future. I made the mistake, however, of thinking that this is a book for women readers. That is, until I found that my husband, who has also worked in Africa, was just as delighted with the tales as I. Some day I will learn not to label! The author will be at Boekhandel van Rossum for a reading and discussion on October 16th at 8 p.m. Do join us! ISBN: 0871139448	New York Times Bookreview AMINATTA FORNA is an author, broadcaster, and journalist. Her previous book, The Devil That Danced on the Water, was a memoir of her life and that of her activist father Mohamed Forna in Sierra Leone.

	In a tiny bookshop in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado this summer, I picked up a copy of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Her memoir of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, it is a gripping story of resilience in the midst of grinding poverty and uncertainty. Walls’ eccentric, self-absorbed but loving parents expect their children to be independent, free spirits who can take care of themselves as the family "skedaddles” from one town to another across the United States. I delighted in the family’s dreams and the father’s charisma and shuddered as alcohol yet again dashed hopes for the future. A surprising and delightful read! ISBN: 074324754x	Walls' road to celebrity gossip columnist was tougher than any angry call she'd ever received from an enraged publicist. In her autobiography she reveals a sad and sometimes tragic childhood that few but her closest friends knew about. (MSNBC) Interview with the author

	The Interpretation of Murder, Jeb Rubenfeld, available in export addition for € 14,99 Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murder is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's most dangerous mysteries. It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship George Washington, accompanied by Carl Jung, his rival and protégé. Across town, in an opulent apartment high above the city, a stunning young woman is found brutally murdered. The next day, a second beauty barely escapes the killer. Yet Nora Acton, suffering from hysteria, can recall nothing of her attack. Asked to help her, Dr. Stratham Younger, America's most committed Freudian analyst, calls in his idol, the Master himself, to guide him through the challenges of analyzing this high-spirited young woman whose family past has been as complicated as his own. The Interpretation of Murder leads readers from the salons of high society New York families to Chinatown --- even far below the currents of the East River where laborers are building the Manhattan Bridge. As Freud fends off a mysterious conspiracy to destroy him, Younger is drawn into an equally thrilling adventure that takes him deep into the subterfuges of the human mind. Richly satisfying, elegantly crafted, The Interpretation of Murder marks the debut of a brilliant, spectacularly entertaining new storyteller – who in his spare time is Professor of Law at Yale University. ISBN 0805080988	Rubenfeld's story, which follows the textbook best-seller pattern, right down to the false denouement and the presence of an important good guy who is not what he seems, has many of the strengths of "The Da Vinci Code." That includes deftly crafted characters, real and fictional; a couple of genuinely harrowing scenes; and an interesting and varied landscape. More at STLtoday Sigmund Freud Carl Jung

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