The Books I Can't Forget

By Sandra Parshall

The latest Facebook meme has people listing books that have made the greatest and most lasting impression on them throughout their lives. Because I tend to hang out mostly with avid readers (many of them also writers), I’ve seen a lot of these personal lists and found them all interesting.

But one vital element is missing: the explanation, the answer to why particular books had such a profound impact. I haven’t posted a list on Facebook because I would feel compelled to include the why and that isn’t part of the meme. But here I can explain what these books mean to me.

Considering the amount of reading I’ve done in my lifetime, the list is surprisingly short. I’ve finished a lot of books with the feeling that they would stay with me, only to realize a year or two later that I barely remember them. These are the books I’m sure I will never forget – the books I’ve read more than once and will probably read again in the future.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

For all the reasons that have made it the most memorable American novel of all time for many readers: unforgettable characters who touch us to the core, a nostalgic setting, and a story of human relationships and social injustice that is as relevant today as it was the year it was published. Lee’s only published novel, Mockingbird is still in print, still selling steadily all over the world, and has become a staple in U.S. classrooms. The movie is wonderful, but if you’ve never read the book, I urge you to find a copy and experience the full power of the writing.



Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen

These stories of Karen Blixen’s life in British East Africa, written under a pseudonym after her return to Denmark in 1931, have an unbreakable hold on my imagination. Most younger people today know Out of Africa only as romantic movie, but the book is a loving and profoundly elegiac memoir of a time and a place that none of us will ever experience. The very thought of colonialism and the subjugation of native tribes is abhorrent, and Dinesen’s tales are certainly colored by the European views of the time and a sad longing for a perfect life that couldn’t be sustained under the pressure of change. But each word she wrote displays her deep love of the land and its wildlife, and her respect for the native people who were in every sense her friends. Dinesen introduced to me an idealized East Africa, and every time I reread the opening lines of Out of Africa I feel homesick for a place I’ve never been:

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.


Everything ever published by Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers

These two Georgians were the writers who most influenced me when I was young because, unlike the classic authors I was reading for English class, O’Connor and McCullers wrote about people I recognized from my own life. O’Connor’s style was sharper, utterly lacking in sentimentality, but both wrote about the essential solitude of the human soul that separates us from each other. Although McCullers traveled and had an international set of friends while O’Connor lived on a small Georgia farm with her mother, their lives had much in common. Both showed their genius early; McCullers published her stunning first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, at 23, and O’Connor published the classic morality tale Wise Blood at 27. O’Connor died of lupus at 39, leaving behind two published novels and 32 short stories, some published in her lifetime and the rest collected after her death. McCullers suffered a series of strokes in her twenties that paralyzed her left side by the time she was 31, but she produced eight novels before a final brain hemorrhage killed her at age 50.


A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
 
This is the book that made me understand how much it’s possible to do with a mystery. Although I never miss a Rendell novel, I still consider this densely layered story of lies, love, and cruelty within a seemingly ordinary family to be her masterpiece. I still have my1987 paperback copy, but it’s so fragile from handling that when my book group discussed it a few years ago I bought a later edition that I could mark up and dog-ear without regret. A British TV adaptation totally failed to capture the novel’s complexity and the insight gained through time shifts and memories. You have to read the novel to full appreciate Rendell’s achievement.



Mortal Memory by Thomas H. Cook

Cook’s haunting story, narrated by the sole survivor of a family massacre, has drawn me back many times to reread passages, chapters, the whole book. Cook’s prose is beautiful, a pleasure to read, and he uses it to create an atmosphere of quiet terror that is far more powerful than a graphic picture painted with hard-edged language and ugly words. Like A Dark-Adapted Eye, this is a many-layered story of family life gone desperately wrong.







Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Lehane’s great novel about a neighborhood torn apart – and brought together – by crimes both distant and recent encompasses such a broad range of emotions and relationships that it’s difficult to describe in a few words. With equal skill and insight, he zooms out to portray a community in turmoil and zooms in to explore a single man or woman’s inner torment or a couple’s marriage. Murder and detection are part of the story, but this is far more than a simple crime novel. Mystic River is great fiction on every level – and again, if you’ve only seen the film, you need to read the book.

What makes a great beginning?

Sandra Parshall

You have to hook the reader with the opening lines.

Writers hear that so often it’s a wonder any of us makes it past the first sentences of a book. As it is, most authors probably revisit those first lines more times than we’d care to admit before we declare a book finished. Wouldn’t we all love to come up with something that would lift our openings into “Call me Ishmael” territory? An opening that would let no reader put down the book, that any sentient being would find compelling, intriguing, unforgettable?

Yeah, well. We try.

The opening lines of a book have to carry a heavy burden. They must tell the reader what kind of book this is, they must set the mood and/or the scene. They must intrigue. They must make people believe that reading this book will be a worthwhile investment of a few hours out of their lives.

Will I give up on a book if the first line doesn’t sing? Not necessarily. Some of my favorite writers have committed dull openings. But I trust them enough to hang in there. Because I know the caliber of the writer, I am confident the book will rise above its weak opening. Usually it does. Sometimes the reverse happens: the beginning shines but the book as a whole disappoints. A terrific opening followed by a terrific story – that’s what writers aim for and readers demand. 

Looking around the room I’m sitting in and grabbing books at random, I came up with these openings that I like a lot. Can you tell what kind of books they are just from the first lines?

From Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, my very favorite book of 2010:
"The Rutherford girl had been missing for eight days when Larry Ott returned home and found a monster waiting in his house."

Lies of the Heart by Michelle Boyajian (2010):
"It’s one of those surreal moments in life, sitting there in the courtroom and staring into the eyes of her husband’s killer."

Fourth Day by Zoe Sharp (2011):
"Nothing brings home a sense of your own mortality like being locked up alone in the dark.
Which was, of course, precisely why they’d done it."

A Hard Day’s Fright by Casey Daniels (2011):
"Here’s the thing people didn’t get about Lucy Pasternak, I mean people who never met her: Lucy sparkled."

If Books Could Kill by Kate Carlisle (2010):
"If my life were a book, I would have masking tape holding my hinges together. My pages would be loose, my edges tattered and my boards exposed, the front flyleaf torn and the leather mottled and moth-eaten. I’d have to take myself apart and put myself back together, as any good book restoration expert would do."

Breakheart Hill by Thomas H. Cook (1995), one of my all-time favorite novels:
"This is the darkest story that I ever heard, and all my life I have labored not to tell it."

Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence (1996), another lasting favorite:
"Whatever they thought when they found her was bound to be wrong."

What first lines have you come across lately that instantly caught your interest? Quote them in the comments section, with the book titles and authors’ names so others will know what to look for if they’re also intrigued.

For those of you who are writers: Please feel free to show off the opening lines of your latest books! And tell us how much time and thought went into crafting them. 

The Character with My Name

Sandra Parshall

I knew a character in a future Thomas H. Cook novel would bear my name, but – considering how long it takes a novel to wend its way through the production process – I thought “future” meant 2010 or beyond. I acquired the naming rights to a Cook character last October, when a generous friend placed the winning bid at the Bouchercon live auction and passed it on to me as a gift. I resigned myself to waiting a year or two to see it happen. So I was both startled and thrilled a few days ago when I was reading Cook’s just-released novel, The Fate of Katherine Carr, and came upon this bit of dialog on page 24: “Sandra Parshall, the woman who runs Brookwood Residential...”

I gave a little yelp of pleasure and read on, thinking that would be “my” only appearance in my favorite writer’s new book. But wait! On page 35, my name popped up again in a telephone conversation, followed by a full-blown scene. A speaking part! I felt like a lowly film extra who’s been plucked from the anonymous crowd and shoved in front of the camera.

I have to admit it felt weird. I’ve used real people’s names in stories, so I ought to know better, but there I was, comparing the fictional Sandra Parshall to the real me. She’s described as “a woman in her late thirties” – oh, hey, I like losing all those years and reclaiming what I’ve begun to think of as my youth. But... she has “somewhat lusterless brown hair, cut in a way that was ruthlessly indifferent to style.” Now hold on a minute. I don’t have the best hair in the world, and heaven knows it drives me nuts most of the time, but this seems a bit unkind. Oh, stop it, I told myself. This is a character, it isn’t you! But the next day found me in the hair care aisle at CVS, weighing the virtues of various products that promised to leave the user’s tresses shiny enough to blind onlookers. Can Tom Cook now claim that his novel has changed a life, or at least someone’s hair? Alas, no. After trying new products, I don’t see much difference in the luster level, and as for the style, I lay all the blame squarely on Cassie, my hairdresser.

The brief trauma of the lusterless hair behind me, I continued reading, certain I wouldn’t see my name again. But on page 63, the fictional Sandra turns up on one end of a telephone conversation. We don’t learn a great deal about her, but she seems a compassionate person, a professional caregiver who tries to project optimism for the sake of desperately ill patients. I approve. I’m happy to lend my name to this fictional woman.

I’m getting a little worried, though, about reactions to the way I’ve used real names in my next book, Broken Places, which will be out in March 2010. I don’t expect the real Cricket to object to the fictional Cricket being bigger, heavier, and shaggier, but will the person who bought the naming rights for a dog feel that I’ve insulted the real Cricket? Will the owners of the real Maggie, Lisa, and Mr. Piggles take offense at my portrayals? Will the real Angie think my character, a young woman, is a bit too blindly devoted to her handsome employer? But I gave her nice hair, Angie!

I’m beginning to appreciate the courage of a writer like Robert Fate, whose new book, Baby Shark’s Jugglers at the Border, is filled with characters named for real people. Although most will be pleased with the mentions, Bob writes in the acknowledgments, “Andre Jardini will complain, but doesn’t he always?” I’m not sure I’ll ever dare to go that far with humans, but I’ll be at Bouchercon this fall, once more offering an animal name as a prize in the live auction. If someone wants to donate a princely sum to charity, I'll add another animal of any species the winning bidder wants. Then the PDD readers may have to suffer along with me as I struggle to justify the presence of a walrus or camel in a rural Virginia community.

By the way, my blog sister Julia Buckley recently interviewed Thomas Cook about The Fate of Katherine Carr and his writing life, and if you haven’t read the interview yet, you missed something special. It’s an excellent complement to a wonderful book, which I would recommend even if it didn’t have my name in it.

Thomas H. Cook on The Whims of Fate, The Artistic Imagination, and The Saddest Places on Earth

by Julia Buckley
(photo link here)
I recently interviewed Thomas H. Cook after reading his amazing book, THE FATE OF KATHERINE CARR. Then, over spring break, I read Cook's RED LEAVES and could not forget about it. The story haunted me for days. Such is the power of Cook's writing, and I thought I'd share the interview here at deadly daughters since he has such profound things to say.

Tom, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for my blog.

Your new book is called The Fate of Katherine Carr. There seem to be references in the book to the notion of Fate, in the ancient Greek sense. Is mythology an influence in your writing?

Mythology has always been an influence because the figures of myth are so fully representational of various aspects of human life. They are the great generalities, and in that sense they are very efficient in conveying large themes. One only needs to reference Sisyphus, for example, and the question of futility is rendered completely. Using mythological themes and figures also allows the author to demonstrate that he/she is fully aware of the smallness of his/her current contribution in comparison to the greatness of our literary inheritance.

The story revolves around a man’s unspeakable loss: that of his eight-year-old son, murdered years before. Your previous book, Red Leaves, involved the disappearance of an eight-year-old girl. Is the recurring theme of child abduction one to which you want to draw attention, or is it more that this sort of desperate conflict makes for a compelling plot?

I think the loss of a child is one of the most profound experiences of human life. I can think of nothing that could propel an individual or a family into a more heightened state of crisis. For that reason, it creates an intense emotional atmosphere for the characters, one that allows them to move through clouds of grief and recrimination to a self-awareness that would not have been possible for them before the loss.

Your main character, George, is a travel writer, and you yourself are a well-traveled person. So I will ask my perennial blog question: what’s the most beautiful place in the world?

I think the most beautiful place I have ever seen is the valley that sweeps out from the terraces of Assisi for the simple reason that it appeared so dreamy and unreal. There are valleys in Ireland that have the same sense of being the product of fantasy, rather than an actual landscape. But stark places can be beautiful, too, and I love the red desert of Central Australia and the truly frightening aspect of Ayer’s Rock. Currently I am doing a travel book about the saddest places on earth for my British publisher, and these travels have led me to appreciate the “beauty” of prisons, castle ruins, battlefields and cemeteries.

That sounds absolutely wonderful--and what a great idea.

You hold master’s degrees in both history and philosophy. Do you find yourself drawing on the extensive writings of historians and philosophers when you write mysteries?

I draw on that part of my education quite a bit. In MASTER OF THE DELTA I even have a character who has been writing a biography of Lincoln for twenty years. I really enjoy historical research, and had I not taken up writing novels, I’d have tried to write the sort of histories that David McCullough writes. I had already passed my PhD oral examination at Columbia when I wrote my first novel, and so I was well on my way to becoming a historian when I gave it up.


One of the most moving lines in your book, to me, was “there is nothing more heartbreaking than the sound of other people’s children when you have lost your own.” This captures the tone of George’s narration throughout the novel. Is it painful to try to get inside of a character who has suffered so deeply? Is this a necessity for writing a good mystery?

Frankly, I think one of the problems with the current state of mystery writing is that there is not enough focus on characterization of this sort. As a reader, I don’t really care “who dun it” if I don’t care to whom it was done. The problem with writing about the suffering of your characters as movingly as you can, however, is that many readers find that sort of mystery depressing, and therefore prefer simple puzzle mysteries or action thrillers in which characterization takes a back seat to cleverness of plot and breakneck narrative momentum. For that reason I think some mystery writers have to seek an audience that extends beyond the genre and into the mainstream, a tightrope trip down the light fantastic that is by no means easy, and which is usually not very successful.

But like your book about the beauty in sad places, there can be a greal deal of beauty in a person's sadness--often because of the love or loss that creates it. I think you've been quite successful at conveying this with Katherine Carr.

One of the characters in Katherine Carr has progeria, the premature aging disease. The relationship between Alice, the girl afflicted with this disease, and the narrator, George, is a very moving part of the book. Did you have to research the disease, or had you been familiar with it? Was Alice meant to be another example of the whims of Fate?

I had no experience with progeria and so I had to research the disease before writing about Alice. When I began the book, there was no Alice. But George needed to be working on another profile as he investigated the fate of Katherine Carr, and Alice simply forced herself into the book. She is certainly an example of the iron-grip of fate, the play of accident in life, and of life’s essential injustice. I did not want to make her a saintly figure, however, but rather, a girl who is primarily propelled by an innate intelligence that allows her to see things both analytically and intuitively, a combination that, in a single human being, creates a very fruitful partnership between the powers of concentration and those of imagination.

You won an Edgar award in 1996 and have been nominated for several more. Does winning prestigious awards make writing the next novel more daunting? Or are you able to forget your reputation while you craft a mystery?

Edgar wins and nominations really don’t have anything to do with writing. One likes to hope that they are the fruit of good writing, but beyond that, I don’t see that they have any influence.

Your works have been translated into fifteen languages. Do you have a favorite cover? Did any of your titles become mangled in translation?

I can read Spanish well enough to know that a couple of my Spanish translations have been really good. I don’t read any of the other languages into which my novels have been translated. I have really liked some of the British covers, as well as the Danish and the Japanese. I am often struck by the very different idea of the novel that different covers present, and with that, the sheer variety of artistic imagination.

Because of your history and philosophy expertise, I must ask this question: have you ever wished you could meet a historical figure (or figures)? If so, who?

I would like to have been the third guy on that walk Melville took with Hawthorne, though if they were like most writers, they probably only talked about advances, printings, and the dismal state of the publishing business.

Seriously, in terms of historical figures, I think it would be interesting to speak with some of the world’s great scientists. I would love to explore that kind of creative thinking and discovery.

You were born in Fort Payne, Alabama, which bills itself in its literature as “The Official Sock Capital of the World.” Did you ever have a part in the sock-making industry?

No, I never worked in the sock mills. When I was a boy, I worked as a stock clerk and floor-sweeper and window washer for a dry goods store. Sadly, the sock mills have mostly closed in Fort Payne, the latest and most disastrous closing only a few weeks ago, with a huge layoff of workers. I was told that all the factory equipment was disassembled and moved to China, which is a grim commentary, in my view, on what is happening in our country.

You have also written true crime novels. (Early Graves and Blood Echoes). Do you find these difficult to write and research? Are they more disturbing to write than the story of a fictional crime?

I find non-fiction of any kind much easier than writing novels. You are, of course, restricted to the facts, but at the same time you are freed from the very different rigors of the imagination. I don’t find one more disturbing than the other, though it is always more haunting to revisit a real crime, where people actually suffered. I also find crime scene photos truly haunting.

What are your favorite leisure activities?

I like to read, listen to music and go to the theater. I rarely go to movies because people talk and text-message continually, and I find this very distracting. I rely on Netflix for movies now, and by that means, I can actually focus on what I’m seeing. I am also an amateur cook, and I enjoy whipping up meals.

You are just finishing a new book. Do you go straight from one book to another, or do you allow yourself small vacations from writing?

I go straight from one to the other. I sent the next book (THE LAST TALK WITH LOLA FAYE) in to my editor this morning, and I will start the new novel – no title yet – later this afternoon. I have already been thinking about it for weeks..


That is impressive! Speaking of vacations, do you have a favorite retreat?

My wife and I have a house on Cape Cod, where we spend most of our time, and which is my favorite retreat. We also have an apartment in New York City, however, and I like going there, too. I traveled to Fiji and Hong Kong last year, as well as several other places, but like most people, I’ve taken quite a hit in terms of savings, and so I don’t expect to be traveling nearly as much this year. I will got to Hiroshima, however, for the “saddest places’ book.

Tom, thank you so much for your thoughtful and thought-provoking answers, and for writing such a great book. I look forward to reading Lola Faye!

Kill me, but don't misspell my name

Sandra Parshall

Mystery fans are the only people I know who will happily pay somebody to murder them. If they can’t find anyone willing to bump them off, they’ll settle for being turned into dogs or hookers.

At every big mystery convention – Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime, etc. – an auction of items donated by writers raises thousands of dollars for charity. The biggest chunk of money goes for “items” that cost the authors nothing and can’t be carried home in a suitcase: the chance to have their names given to characters in future novels.

I don’t know whether it’s sheer love of the genre, the desire for a kind of immortality, or latent masochism, but the bidding for this honor can be fierce. At the first Malice Domestic I attended a few years ago, I looked on in open-mouthed wonder as someone paid $800 to have her name in a Donna Andrews novel. At Bouchercon in Baltimore this year, the highest bid of the auction was $1,500 for naming rights in a Laurie R. King book.

Reviewer Andi Shechter and librarian/writer Gary Warren Niebuhr, great friends to the genre, have both bought “appearances” in several books. Short, dark-haired Andi got a kick out of being a tall, blonde hooker in an S.J. Rozan mystery, and Gary got a three-in-one deal in Rozan’s Winter and Night: a major character is named Gary, another character’s last name is Niebuhr, and the setting is a town called Warrenton.

Of course, writers have always enjoyed slipping the names of real friends and relatives – and their pets – into fiction, free of charge. (I don’t think the real Spike paid to be immortalized as the lovably disagreeable terrier in Donna Andrews’s Meg Langslow series.) Everything I write includes at least a couple of characters named for friends. But character-naming isn’t always done out of affection. There’s a lot of truth in the warning that you shouldn’t antagonize a mystery writer because you might end up dead or serving a long prison sentence – in the pages of a book.

Honoring friends and getting even with enemies are private pleasures for the writer, usually not shared with readers, but some writers use the lure of naming rights in future books to promote a current release. Karin Slaughter’s recurring Get Slaughtered contest is always deluged with entries. Lisa Gardner named a murder victim in Gone for a contest winner.

Contest and auction winners usually see their names attached to characters who appear in only one book, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Tess Gerritsen’s medical examiner, Dr. Maura Isles, got her name through an auction and was intended as a one-book character, but the fictional Maura grabbed a permanent role as co-protagonist, with Detective Jane Rizzoli, in a best-selling series.

At Malice Domestic this year, I decided, with some trepidation, to try my luck at raising money for charity by donating naming rights to a character. Because I’m not well-known and haven’t published a lot of books, I was afraid no one would be interested. I crept into the room as the auction started and sat near the door so I could creep out again, mortified, if nobody wanted to be in my book. Angie Hogancamp saved me from disgrace. She’ll be one of the good people in my next novel.

For the Bouchercon auction this year, I donated animal naming rights, figuring people would pay even more to immortalize their pets than they would to see their own names in print. The bidding was under way for the right to name a dog, and I’d already offered to throw in naming rights for a cat to raise the ante, when a woman in the audience said that if I would add a guinea pig, she would pay $900 for all three. Sold! Look for Maggie, Lisa Marie, and Mr. Piggles in my next book. Many thanks to Meg Born for her amazing donation to the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Viva House, a mission for the poor and homeless in Baltimore.

I also came away from Bouchercon a winner, after an incredibly thoughtful friend won naming rights for a character in a Thomas H. Cook novel and gave the prize to me because Cook is my favorite writer. So now I'm going to find out how it feels to see a character on the page bearing my name. I'm pretty sure it will feel fantastic.

Do you enter character naming contests? Do you bid for naming rights at conference auctions? Have you ever won, and were you happy with the character that got your name? (I know one cat owner who was miffed when she paid to have her feline in a novel and his name was given to a human.) Why do you think people enjoy this so much?

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Whatever your choices, get out and VOTE on November 4!