« Widget | Main | Rock '80 »

December 20, 2007

Publishers Eekly

Time to talk about book stuff for a little bit.

I just got back from New York, where I had a little meeting with the folks at HarperCollins; midway through, my wonderful wonderful new editor Jeanette Perez slipped me a photocopy of my first-ever review for We Disappear, which had just, um, "appeared" that day from Publishers Weekly. I'll copy it in its entirety:

We Disappear Scott Heim. Harper Perennial, $13.95 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-146897-1 Strange and luminous, this fascinating psychological thriller from Heim (In Awe) tackles questions of identity, illness and trauma. Scott, a writer and drug addict, travels back to Kansas from New York City at the request of his ill mother, Donna, who’s become obsessed with missing children. Scott soon finds out that Donna believes she was kidnapped in her youth by an elderly couple who eventually returned her unharmed. This experience has led her to an odd alliance with a boy who leaves candy on Donna’s front porch. When Donna becomes too ill to continue research for a supposed book on disappeared children, Scott, with help from a friend of Donna’s, goes on the road for answers. Taut and beautifully clear, the writing at times recalls that of Paul Auster, but the plot ends in a place less interesting than where it began. The reader may feel that revealing the mundane truth behind Donna’s childhood experiences betrays the essential mystery of all the lost boys and girls described in the novel. (Mar.)

After our meeting, Jeanette and I, along with Heather Drucker, Mara Lander, and Amy Baker, excellent people one and all, trooped through the snow to have a drink at a nearby bar, where I tried to make my martini shoo away the lingering thought of those small but snarky lines about "less interesting" and "mundane truth."

That's the thing about reviews. Even when 95% of one is good, it's the 5% that I (and a lot of other writers I know) will never forget. I can still quote lines from reviews I got in 1995 that upset me. If I were smarter, I'd be more like Michael, who doesn't read a single review of his books. In general, though, I think this PW review is pretty decent, but it's making me feel queasy and apprehensive again, since it's basically been a decade since I've published a new novel.

Speaking of Michael: you can now get Charity Girl in paperback!

(More about New York: It seemed quieter this time than ever before. Maybe it was all the sleet and snow. And, since moving to Boston five years back, I'd forgotten what NYC becomes during holiday season. Parties galore. I met up with a bunch of writer friends, most notably Jon and Vestal, at one, but I don't really remember very much of the last hour of it.... Oh, and congrats to Vestal for selling his new book!)

Tonight (12/19) I also gave my first interview about my novel, for a magazine's March issue. I'll post links when these sort of things come out. And Harper is currently finalizing the dates for my book tour, which I'll also post here and on my Myspace page very soon.

I realize this blog lately has become an endless posting of YouTube and Myspace embeddings, so I guess this diary-like entry is overdue. Happy holidays....