The story isn’t so much about people, but it’s more about what people are like, as humans, from the kids who taunt our narrator, to the couple that sits enclosed behind the glass windows of an office building across the canal from where our narrator sits. From time to time our hero sits with this woman he’s just met, and sometimes he sits alone, but when they’re together the emotional temprature spikes wildly.

This is funny stuff. Jack wonders the snowbound streets of Iowa City hounded by a maniacal publicity manager from NYC, a hot-and -cold ex-fiance, and a former literary star now down on his own luck. They drink and scheme and lie their way from bars to book signings.

At the behest of his editor, obituary writer Arthur Gopal is sent on assignment to interview an obscure, dying academic as information-gathering for the inevitable. Reading her texts, he becomes enthralled by her work, and despite his personal distaste for her, writes a beautiful elegiac obit for her.

DH: Kyle Beachy’s heartland debut, the coming-of-age novel The Slide, was published by the hyper-selective Dial Press in January of 2009. The Slide takes place in St. Louis and I joined a St. Louis Cardinals fan club while I was reading that book. I’m not even a baseball fan. But I was carried away by The [...]

To say I’ve fallen madly in love with The Imperfectionists is an understatement. Over the last few weeks this debut novel has surprised and thrilled me, never left my side, and somehow renewed my faith in the daily newspaper. I’ve even stopped myself from reading this book so I could make it last longer.

“All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end, it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.”

As a youngster I was heavily invested in reading. My mother took us to the library every week and I always took home a pile of books. A common babysitting method was to drop me at a bookstore, library, or even a flea market (in the bookstall) where I would while away the hours without much concern. In the 70’s and 80’s you could apparently do that kind of thing and not worry about child abductions and the like. From grades 4 to my senior year in high school I spent most of my time in school trying to conceal a book under my desk. I would bring several so I had spares when they were confiscated.

Jess Walter has more voice in his little finger than most novelists will ever possess. He can digress, delineate, rant, rave, ponder, speculate, ruminate, fulminate, and bring the story to a screeching halt if it suits his whimsy, and readers will still follow along breathlessly.

We’ve had so much fun with the 50 Things Writers Shouldn’t Do post (currently up to roughly a gazillion things writer’s shouldn’t do), that we decided to turn the tables, and solicit your help in creating a list of things publishers shouldn’t do, including:

-Don’t get afraid if writers decide to talk to their fans and vice versa. No harm will come from this. Fans are good, not something you have to stamp out at all costs.
-Don’t look for “the sure thing.”
-Don’t publish books you aren’t interested in promoting.
-Don’t publish anymore books about Vampires or Pirates. I don’t care who has died and left a manuscript unpublished.