Waiting on Wednesday: The Great Night by Chris Adrian

-
Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine to highlight an upcoming release we can't wait to read.

 
My pick this week is The Great Night by Chris Adrian, one of The New Yorker's 20 Under 40. It was featured in this week's Library Journal pre-pub alert. Here's what LJ had to say:
I could be highlighting this latest from Adrian because The New Yorker recently included him among America’s top young writers in its “20 Under 40” feature. But in fact I’m doing it mostly because I’m entranced by the plot: a fresh and wild retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. It’s Midsummer Eve 2008 in San Francisco’s Buena Vista Park, where Titania, Oberon, and the other faerie folk now reside in exile. Her adopted son dead, a grief-stricken Titania releases terrible forces upon the world—not good news for three mortals trapped in the park and inside the memories of a loved one that each had lost or forsaken. Meanwhile, a homeless man wants to depose the city’s evil mayor by staging a musical version of Soylent Green. Decidedly darker and crazier than Shakespeare’s play, this would be fun to read with the original and should appeal to literary types of all stripes.
How beautiful is that cover? The Great Night will be published April 26, 2011, but you can pre-order it from Amazon or an independent bookstore now.

Shop Indie Bookstores

As an affiliate, I receive a small commission when you make a purchase through any of the above links. Thank you for contributing to my love of reading!

Comments

  1. ZibileeNovember 10, 2010 at 8:58 AM

    This does sound like a rather interesting retelling, and like something that I am going to have to keep my eye out for. Thanks for sharing it with us. It goes on the list...

    ReplyDelete
  2. ShondaNovember 10, 2010 at 9:58 AM

    You're right... the cover is gorgeous! This is one outside of my comfort zone, so thanks for the preview.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jan von HarzNovember 10, 2010 at 3:59 PM

    Oh one of my favorite plays ever. I am putting this on my wish list.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nic @ Irresistible ReadsNovember 10, 2010 at 5:13 PM

    That cover is gorgeous. It is always interesting to see how somebody retells a classic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sugar and SnarkNovember 12, 2010 at 12:41 AM

    Great choice! Thanks for introducing me to it :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the fir
Read more