the booksellers' kind words about THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU

There is ocean, storm, community, friendship, family, mystery in This Is the Story of You. There are model airplanes pinned to a ceiling and bobbing in the breeze.

There is this book, which will launch next Tuesday, April 12, and be featured in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yesterday afternoon, Hannah Moushabeck, Associate Marketing Manager at Chronicle, began to send me Story word from independent booksellers. Mired in memoir newsletter management and an odd strain of politics, I had not, in any way, expected this.

Next Hannah sent me two images. The one above. The one you're about to see.

What a glorious touch, I thought—this photo of the real book beside one of the figurative and metaphoric planes within its pages.

Thank you, Hannah. And thank you, booksellers. Their words below.

 “What we lose, what we find, how we survive. Mira is alone when the storm hits her barrier-island town, with only a half-grown cat for company. The furor and devastation of the storm is horrible, but it is the aftermath, in the days before emergency help arrives, that is the most harrowing part: looking for loved ones; finding the dead; treating the wounded; finding food and water and shelter; and holding on to hope. The story of a huge storm and its impact on one small community, This is the Story of You is shot through with the gorgeous lyricism of Kephart's writing.” —Nancy Banks, Bookseller, City Stacks Books and Coffee
 
“Beth Kephart has written a lyrical novel where it is as easy to get lost in the language as the story. As often occurs in YA novels, Mira Bunal, is forced to face the worst on her own when a storm like Sandy hits the NJ island she lives on while her brother is receiving a treatment for a serious congenital illness. Mira finds the strength she needs and help in places she doesn't expect it. A great read for both teens and adults --that you might not want to read while summering at the Jersey shore.” —Cathy Fiebach, Bookseller, Main Point Books

  “To pay attention, to love the world, to live beyond ourselves."  This is what they learned living as year-rounders on the 6 mile long 1/2 mile wide vacationers paradise of Haven.  This gripping, powerful YA novel is the story of family and friendship, of learning and learning more, of place and tragedy and resilience.  It is the perfect summer read, but This is the Story of You  will linger long after the last page is turned.  —Angie Tally, Bookseller, The Country Bookshop

“Beautifully written, This is the Story of You follows the life of Mira Banul, a year-rounder living on Haven, a six mile by one-half mile island. Year-rounders are prepared for everything so when news of a giant storm blowing in reaches the island, they think nothing of it. But the storm is like nothing they've ever seen before, and when her family is stuck on the mainland and one of her closest friends is missing, Mira must learn how to cope with loss and rekindle her hope if she is to help the island recover. With new mysteries popping up every chapter, This Is The Story of You is impossible to put down.” — Marya Johnston, Bookseller, Out West Books  

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Main Point Books and When Women Were Birds/Terry Tempest Williams: Reflections

This past Monday I stepped inside a brand-new independent bookstore.

Let me repeat that: a brand-new independent bookstore.

Main Point Books of Bryn Mawr provides a little extra proof (for those who doubt) that both books and those who love them are still very much with us here, in our twenty-first century. Cathy Fiebach, the store's owner and a Penn alum, has placed her shop right next door to a cupcake house (oh, those cupcakes), on the main drag of Lancaster Avenue. She has created a warm and welcoming space, a shop that, during my longish stay (in the company of the writer Sarah Laurence), was bustling with readers of all ages, and with conversations of the typography and paper sort. What do you love? What do you read? What do you have?

Find me a story.

I bought When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice by a writer who has always intrigued me, Terry Tempest Williams. Williams combines ferocity with a very particular brand of lyricism. She lives her life large (as an activist, an environmentalist) and writes it with care, and in this case her prompt—her exploration—concerns the blank journals her mother bequeathed to her.

On the very first page, we learn of the shock of that blankness. It is shortly after the passing of Terry's mother:

On the next full moon I found myself alone in the family home. I kept expecting Mother to appear. Her absence became her presence. It was the right time to read her journals. They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful clothbound books; some floral, some paisley, others in solid colors. The spines of each were perfectly aligned against the lip of the shelves. I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It, too, was empty, as was the fourth, the fifth, the sixth—shelf after shelf after shelf, all my mother's journals were blank.

What do those journals mean? What mystery do they hold, what lesson do they teach, what room do they make for Terry? Over and over again, Terry examines the possible, refutes the obvious, rejects the simple, and in doing say she tells the rough story of her own life—her Mormonism, her love of country, her marriage, her explorations beyond marriage, her one night in a jail, and a frightening diagnosis. Over and again she designates and signifies the blank journals, and then, again, she looks past her own momentary understanding.

When Women Were Birds is often stunning. It can, at times, feel rhetorical, or deliberately obfuscating, or overly mythical—but that is the point. This book offers fifty-four variations on voice, and no easy answers. It is memoir—personal and unifying, wild and precise, needled together by this simple fact, Williams' words:

Each day we begin with the empty page.

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