Most people fall in love with a house or apartment and then wonder queasily who they’ll be living next to. Ever had a disruptive neighbor? You know what I mean!
But in Matthew Pearl’s new novel, "The Award," David wants nothing to do with the odd Cambridge apartment he and his fiancée are being shown until he finds out who's living on the first floor.
“David’s heart fluttered,” Pearl tells us. “He knew, at that moment, that this was all meant to be.”
His downstairs neighbor is a writer of great renown and part of the fun of this book is all of the gossip and dirty laundry about writers!
There’s a scene where a nonfiction ghost writer friend of David’s chides him for struggling with his novel. And he says, “What are you sweating? You write fiction, all you do is make things up–lie…..You just have to lie, lie, lie….”
Makkah Abdur Salaam of Black Garnet Books in St. Paul recommends “Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis,” edited by Kelly Hayes.
Author and licensed therapist Corey Yeager said Minnesotans emotions are not just a response to trauma from the past 75 days, but that it has been stewing since the killing of Jamar Clark in 2015.
NPR book experts share beloved books that made the transition to the big screen, and they’re prepared to discuss and debate why each of them works — and why they believe they’re the best of all time.
