Wednesday at 8 PM on Bibliocracy: Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in its entirely necessary and pleasing way in the newest novel by my guest this week, Susan Straight. In Take One Candle Light a Room, Straight engages the recent and distant past in flashbacks that make it a singular element, nearly a character in itself, along with an ensemble of dead and living family and friends related to a Los Angeles travel writer with deep roots in a desert town east of here, and even deeper roots in Louisiana via a haunting and violent story of racial and sexual injustice. The novel is an inter-generational road trip through time and a rescue story, too, all told with careful attention to idiom and speech and the vivid description of one writer, Susan Straight, composing for her heroine, the remarkable and empathetic fictional writer, one FX Antoine, whose exemplary redefinition of travel and writer make this a risky, exciting, ambitious novel. Susan Straight is the author of the breakout Aquaboogie and five subsequent novels, many celebrated, as well as short stories and essays and two books for young readers. She teaches at UC Riverside, in the city where she was born.
1 comment:
Oh Susan is one of the loveliest persons and writers I have ever known. Heading home for the holidays, but will do my best to listen tonight! I'm very excited about this new book. It's on my Xmas wish list.
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