Title: Panopticon
Author: David Bajo
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Publication Date: October 19, 2010
Hardcover: 345 pages
ISBN: 978-1609530020
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

As the California borderland newspaper where they work prepares to close, three reporters are oddly given assignments to return to stories they’ve covered before—each one surprisingly personal. The first assignment takes reporter Aaron Klinsman and photographer Rita Valdez to an abandoned motel room where the mirrors are draped with towels, bits of black tape cover the doorknobs, and the perfect trace of a woman’s body is imprinted on the bed sheets. From this sexually charged beginning—on land his family used to own—Klinsman, Rita, and their colleague, Oscar Medem understand that they are supposed to uncover something. They just don’t know what.

Following the moonlit paths their assignments reveal through the bars, factories and complex streets of Tijuana and Otay, haunted by the femicides that have spread westward from Juarez, the reporters become more intimately entwined. Tracing the images they uncover, and those they cause and leave behind, they soon realize that every move they make is under surveillance. Beyond this, it seems their private lives and even their memories are being reconstructed by others.

Panopticon is a novel of dreamlike appearances and almost supernatural memories, a world of hidden watchers that evokes the dark recognition of just how little we can protect even our most private moments. It is a shadowy, erotic novel only slightly speculative that opens into the world we all now occupy.

My Review:

Intelligent, complex with intriguing storylines interwoven comprise the excellent novel, Panopticon by David Bajo, where all is not as it appears. Straightaway the reader is introduced to Aaron Klinsman a reporter for the Review, managed by Gina, which is closing at week’s end.  Aaron has three stories to finish up, the Luchadors show, Room 9 at Motel San Ysidro, and the public parks.  Aaron works with Rita Valdez, the Review‘s reporter and colleague Oscar Medem.  The reader learns about Aaron’s childhood in the boarderlands interwoven into the storylines, which is a rather chilling portrayal of modern technology used for safety but exploited for nefarious purposes.  Panopticon reminds the reader that privacy is very much a notion and no longer a reality with CCTV to small cameras in our computers.  Bajo writes a deeply moving, compelling and imaginative story bringing the reader into this chilling reality of vidas, altered perceptions and a rash of femicides.  Bajo brilliantly crafts his tale in a manner where the reader feels as though they themselves are part of this dream or more appropriately, this nightmare.  Reality is blurred in such a manner that one must try to decipher what is reality, what is not and how does one know.  Bajo carefully crafts intriguing and realistic characters as well as vividly descriptive prose creating a novel that is a definite thinking novel.  I took my time reading Panopticon; I found myself pondering Bajo’s storylines and not wanting the book to end.  David Bajo is an author to keep an eye on, no pun intended, and I highly recommend Panopticon to everyone. I think this book is one that shall be spoken about for quite some time.  While it is not a long book, Panopticon would make an excellent group discussion book.

About the Author:

David Bajo was raised on the California-Mexico border and has worked as a journalist and translator. He is the author of The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri and teaches writing at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Elise Blackwell, and their daughter.

I received a complimentary copy of Panopticon by David Bajo from Unbridled Books to review. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.

Title: In Hovering Flight
Author: Joyce Hinnefeld
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Publication Date: August 25, 2009
Paperpack: 288 pages
ISBN: 978-1932961898
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

At 34, Scarlet Kavanagh has the kind of homecoming no child wishes, a visit back to family and dear friends for the gentle passing of her mother, Addie, a famous bird artist and an even more infamous environmental activist. Though Addie and her husband, ornithologist Tom Kavanagh, have made their life in southeastern Pennsylvania, Addie has chosen to die at the New Jersey home of her dearest friend, Cora. This is because the Kavanagh’s ramshackle cottage is filled with too much history and because, in the last ten years or so, and for reasons that are not entirely clear, even bird song has seemed to make Addie angry, or sad, or both. Now, in their final moments together, Scarlet hopes to put to rest the last tensions that have marked their relationship.

Through tender conversations with Cora and Lou, another of Addie’s dear friends, Scarlet slowly comes to peace with her mother’s complicated life. But can she do the same with her own? Scarlet has carried a secret into these foggy days – a secret for Addie, one that involves Cora, too.

In its structure and style this novel follows in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf, Harriet Doerr, and Carol Shields: musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld’s own.

My Review:

Beautiful, compassionate, and life affirming, In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld is about the circle of one woman’s life and the lives of those she touched.  Hinnefeld opens her novel with the death of Addie Kavanagh and where the reader first meets Addie’s and Tom’s daughter, Scarlet and Addie’s best friend Cora.  Hinnefeld takes the reader from past and present to examine in-depth numerous relationships; mother-daughter, secrets, deep friendships, as well as the beautiful romance between husband and wife, an unwavering devotion to each other’s passions, dreams, and desires.  In Hovering Flight will no doubt affect readers on many different levels, I was deeply moved by the message of love, compassion, and the subtle and not so subtle messages of nature and one’s awareness and connectivity to nature.  Hinnefeld has orchestrated a brilliant array of intelligent and rather enjoyable characters, packing many messages into a short novel, yet without the storyline ever appearing rushed.  For me to merely point out the beauty contained within the pages of In Hovering Flight is an oversimplification of Hinnefeld’s messages, this is a story that must be felt through the reader.  I recommend without reservation the debut novel, In Hovering Flight, by the very promising author Hinnefeld, to all readers.

About the Author:

Joyce Hinnefeld is the Cohen Chair in English and Literature at Moravian in Bethlehem, Pa. She is the author of a short story collection, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (University Press of New England, 1998), which was awarded the 1997 Breadloaf Writer’s Conference Bakeless Prize in fiction in 1997. Her first novel, In Hovering Flight, was a #1 Indie Next Pick.

I received a complimentary copy of In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld from Unbridled Books to review.  Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.

Title: Stranger Here Below
Author: Joyce Hinnefeld
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Publication Date: September 28, 2010
Hardcover: 288 pages
ISBN: 978-1609530044
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

In 1961, when Amazing Grace Jansen, a firecracker from Appalachia, meets Mary Elizabeth Cox, the daughter of a Black southern preacher, at Kentucky’s Berea College, they already carry the scars and traces of their mothers’ troubles. Poor and single, Maze’s mother has had to raise her daughter alone and fight to keep a roof over their heads. Mary Elizabeth’s mother has carried a shattering grief throughout her life, a loss so great that it has disabled her and isolated her stern husband and her brilliant, talented daughter.

The caution this has scored into Mary Elizabeth has made her defensive and too private and limited her ambitions, despite her gifts as a musician. But Maze’s earthy fearlessness might be enough to carry them both forward toward lives lived bravely in an angry world that changes by the day.

Both of them are drawn to the enigmatic Georginea Ward, an aging idealist who taught at Berea sixty years ago, fell in love with a black man, and suddenly found herself renamed as a sister in a tiny Shaker community. Sister Georgia believes in discipline and simplicity, yes. But, more important, her faith is rooted in fairness and the long reach of unconditional love.

This is a novel about three generations of women and the love that makes families where none can be expected.

My Review:

Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld is a book that will have the reader pondering the greater implications of family long after the last word is read.  Hinnefeld creates a stunningly beautiful, sad and yet hopeful, story of the lives of three generations of women spanning the years 1862-1968, all interconnected in a non-linear manner throughout the novel.  The story opens up with Amazing Grace “Maze” Jansen meeting her roommate Mary Elizabeth Cox in their room at Berea College. Next the reader is present at the birth of Georginea in 1872, the focal point of this brilliant story of fractured lives, women stronger than they know, family ties and hidden secrets yearning to be freed.  Stranger Here Below is carefully crafted and vividly descriptive, possibly more so to me, since I have been to the places mentioned in the novel, nonetheless, Hinnefeld makes certain the reader feels connected be it with Cincinnati or Berea, Kentucky.  Hinnefeld blurs the lines of white and black and focuses on the women themselves and how they overcome or endear what life tosses each woman and how it impacts each successive generation.  Stranger Here Below is a novel that transports the reader, makes the reader wish there was more, yet gives the reader all that is required and commands the reader to think and take the lessons offered up through the many stories and extrapolate them into the reader’s life.  I cannot offer enough praise for Stranger Here Below and believe it is a novel all women should read and a book not to be missed by book discussion groups.

About the Author:

Joyce Hinnefeld is the Cohen Chair in English and Literature at Moravian in Bethlehem, Pa. She is the author of a short story collection, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (University Press of New England, 1998), which was awarded the 1997 Breadloaf Writer’s Conference Bakeless Prize in fiction in 1997. Her first novel, In Hovering Flight, was a #1 Indie Next Pick.

I received a complimentary copy of Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld from Unbridled Books to review. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.