| Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang, reads at the bookshop Thursday night
| ... followed by Amy Laura Hall Sunday afternoon and John Darnielle (at Motorco) on Monday. Later in the month we host Penny Parsons and Sydney Nathans. See our Events calendar just below! |
| High praise for the new books from Kevin Wilson
and John Darnielle | | Here are the first and last paragraphs of John Irving's review of Kevin Wilson's new novel, Perfect Little World, in Sunday's New York Times Book Review:
"Good novels are constructed; they may seem effortless in their design, but they are planned as purposely as a well-built house. Good stories have an admirable architecture, and both an apparent and transparent craftsmanship. In a novel, the construction counts. Kevin Wilson, the author of a much acclaimed debut novel, "The Family Fang," knows how to construct a story....
"I said I should stop, but I've told you too much. It's a novel you keep reading for old-fashioned reasons - because it's a good story, and you need to know what happens. But you also keep reading because you want to know what a good family is. Everyone wants to know that." And praise from all over for John Darnielle's Universal Harvester:
"Eerie . . . unnerving . . . Darnielle adeptly juggles multiple stories that collide with chaotic consequences somewhere in the middle of nowhere. With a nod to urban legends and friend-of-a-friend tales, the author prepares readers for the surreal truth, the improbable events that 'have form, and shape, and weight, and meaning" --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Darnielle's masterfully disturbing follow-up to the National Book Award-nominated Wolf in White Van reads like several Twilight Zone scripts cut together by a poet . . . All the while, [Darnielle's] grasp of the Iowan composure-above-all mindset instills the book with agonizing heartbreak." --Daniel Kraus, Booklist (starred review)
"Darnielle's second novel opens like a dark suspense story . . . but he ultimately pursues a softer and more nuanced exploration of family and loss . . . Darnielle's prose is consistently graceful and empathetic . . . [Universal Harvester is] a smart and rangy yarn." --Kirkus Reviews |
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Upcoming Events--through February 23rd | (You can also see our complete events calendar on our website) KEVIN WILSON Thursday, February 9 at 7:00PM Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang) comes to The Regulator for a reading and book signing of his new book, Perfect Little World. Isabelle Poole is pregnant and on her own, the baby's father-her high school  art teacher-out of the picture. Not sure where to turn, Izzy joins The Infinite Family Project, an experiment in child and family development, led by the awkwardly charming child psychiatrist Preston Grind. Funded by an eccentric billionaire, the project is an attempt to create a "perfect little world," bringing together ten different families as a single family unit in order to raise exceptional children. All starts well, with Izzy and her son thriving in their new surroundings, but soon the equilibrium among the families begins to disintegrate and things fall apart. As her growing feelings for Dr. Grind further complicate the adventure in experimental living, Izzy ultimately must decide what truly matters when it comes to family. Kevin Wilson is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Family Fang, named a best book of the year by Time, People, Salon, and Esquire. He teaches fiction at the University of the South and lives in Sewanee, Tennessee with his wife and two sons. AMY LAURA HALL Sunday, February 12, 2:00 PM (note the time)  For the last two years, acclaimed theologian Amy Laura Hall has written a lively, wide-ranging, opinionated column for the Durham Herald-Sun. In her column, Hall has sought--without flatly rejecting globalism--to think and act locally. She has also responded to what she sees as a disturbing Christian turn toward asceticism and away from abundance. Drawing from her scholarship, but also from conversations at coffee shops and around the dinner table, Hall's "missives of love" engage topics such as school dress codes, ubiquitous surveillance cameras, LGBTQ dignity, and bullies in the workplace. They draw richly and variously on pop songs, dead saints, young adult literature, and many stories about actual neighbors and family members. Often offbeat and always riveting, they ask how the world around us works and can work much better for the sake of daily truth and flourishing. Amy Laura Hall is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke University. In addition to Writing Home, With Love, Hall is the author of Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love and Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction. APS CAT ADOPTION EVENT Sunday, February 12, 2:00 pm Durham Animal Protection Society will hold a monthly cat adoption event at the Regulator. Come visit our furry friends from 2:00 - 3:30. Note the time and date. JOHN DARNIELLE Monday, February 13, 7:30PM at Motorco Music Hall, 723 Rigsbee Avenue This is a ticketed event. Each $10.00 ticket will be good for $10.00 off the purchase of the book Durham guy John Darnielle will join us at Motorco to read from, discuss,  and sign copies of his new novel, Universal Harvester. Set in Iowa in the late 1990s, life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. John Darnielle's first novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times bestseller, National Book Award nominee, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction, and widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. He is the writer, composer, guitarist, and vocalist for the band the Mountain Goats. He lives in Durham with his wife and sons. NONFICTION AUTHORS ASSOCIATION (NFAA) Wednesday, February 15, 6:15PM -- 7:45PM For more information: http://www.meetup.com/Durham-Chapel-Hill-Chapter-Nonfiction-Authors-Association
PENNY PARSONS Saturday, February 18, 3:00PM Bluegrass fans, this one's for you! Penny Parsons joins us on Saturday, February 18 at 3:00PM, for a reading and signing of her new biography, Foggy Mountain Troubadour: The Life and Music of Curly Seckler. Parsons maps the bluegrass legend's road from Carolina cotton fields to Nashville. With his trademark mandolin style and unequaled tenor harmonies, Curly Seckler has carved out a 77-year career in bluegrass and country music.
"A front row seat to bluegrass history."--Charlotte News & Observer
Penny Parsons is a music journalist and is a regular contributor to bluegrass publications. SYDNEY NATHANS Thursday, February 23, 7:00PM The exodus of millions of African Americans from the rural South is a central theme of black life and liberation in the 20th century. A Mind to Stay offers a counterpoint to the narrative of the Great Migration. Sydney Nathans tells the rare story of people who moved from being enslaved to becoming owners of the very land they had worked in bondage, and who have held onto it from emancipation through the Civil Rights era. Through the prism of a single plantation and the destiny of black families that dwelt on it for over a century and a half, A Mind to Stay illuminates the changing meaning of land and land owning to successive generations of rural African Americans.
Sydney Nathans is Professor Emeritus of History, Duke University. He was selected as the winner of the 2013 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for his book To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker (Harvard University Press). The Douglass Prize is awarded annually by Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. |
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