Literary Fiction | Bibliotica

About the book, Fog Island Mountains

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc. (November 4, 2014)

What if you could rewrite a tragedy? What if you could give grace to someone’s greatest mistake?

Huddled beneath the volcanoes of the Kirishima mountain range in southern Japan, also called the Fog Island Mountains, the inhabitants of small town Komachi are waiting for the biggest of the summer’s typhoons. South African expatriate Alec Chester has lived in Komachi for nearly forty years. Alec considers himself an ordinary man, with common troubles and mundane achievements until his doctor gives him a terminal cancer diagnosis and his wife, Kanae, disappears into the gathering storm. Kanae flees from the terrifying reality of Alec’s diagnosis, even going so far as to tell a childhood friend that she is already a widow. Her willful avoidance of the truth leads her to commit a grave infidelity, and only when Alec is suspected of checking himself out of the hospital to commit a quiet suicide does Kanae come home to face what it will mean to lose her husband.

Buy, read, and discuss Fog Island Mountains

Amazon | Books-a-Million | Tantor Media | Goodreads

About the author, Michelle Bailat-Jones

Michelle Bailat-Jones is a writer and translator. Her novel Fog Island Mountains won the Christopher Doheny Award from the Center for Fiction in New York City. She translated Charles Ferdinand Ramuz s 1927 Swiss classic Beauty on Earth. She is the reviews editor at the web journal Necessary Fiction, and her fiction, poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in a number of journals, including the Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Quarterly Conversation, PANK, Spolia Mag, Two Serious Ladies, and the Atticus Review. Michelle lives in Switzerland.

My Thoughts

I’m not sure how to describe this novel. It’s very short – under 200 pages – but those pages are meaty and rich and vibrant and there is never a point at which I felt like I was being stiffed on pagecount. Instead I felt like I was instantly immersed in a world full of interesting characters, family drama, and the ups and downs of life, as lived in a small island village.

Stories involving cancer are either grim to the point of morbidity, or sappy to the point of nausea. This book was neither. Instead, it felt like a real family dealing with real problems – sibling rivalry, love, loss, fear of losing a spouse or a parent, set against the backdrop of this village full of friends and colleagues and other locals.

It’s also about belonging…interestingly, Alec, the ex-pat from South Africa, often feels more like he belongs on this tiny Japanese island than his family seems to…it makes everything so much more poignant, and so much more complex.

I enjoyed the quietness that ran through this novel, and I also enjoyed the convention of a third party relating the story. It was an interesting stylistic choice, but it made everything feel like we were seeing it through a soft-focus lens, and that really worked for the story Bailat-Jones was telling.

Goes well with green tea, miso soup, sashimi (but no octopus because the texture is gross) and tempura. Stereotypical, I know, but appropriate.

This review is part of a blog tour sponsored by TLC Book Tours. For the complete list of tour stops, see below. For more information, click HERE.

Tuesday, November 4th: The Discerning Reader

Thursday, November 6th: BookNAround

Tuesday, November 11th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Thursday, November 13th: Bell, Book, & Candle

Monday, November 17th: Book Nerd

Thursday, November 20th: Too Fond

Monday, December 1st: Sara’s Organized Chaos

Tuesday, December 2nd: Bibliotica

Wednesday, December 3rd: Regular Rumination

Friday, December 5th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Monday, December 8th: Book Dilettante

Tuesday, December 9th: Olduvai Reads

Wednesday, December 10th: Svetlana’s Reads and Views

About the book, The Dunning Man

• Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: Lavender Ink (October 19, 2014)

The six stories in Kevin Fortuna’s hilarious and gripping debut story collection, The Dunning Man, feature anti-heroes who reject society’s rules, and often show a gritty, Irish American take on the worlds in which they live. Characters from all walks of life—a rogue hip-hop star, a blackjack dealing mom, a middle-aged drunk plowing through his inheritance, and an empty nester housewife trying to make peace with the past. They each exist in the here and now, living for what’s possible and what’s left—not what they’ve left behind. Redemption awaits all, but only along the rutted, gut-churning path of honest self-examination. Age quod agis.

Set in Atlantic City, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., the Hudson Valley and Manhattan, Fortuna’s stories depict the violent clash between society’s expectations and the chaotic arc of individual destiny. These are powerful tales of truth seekers imbued with larger-than-life personalities and the all-consuming need to find something worth seeking.

Buy, read, & discuss The Dunning Man

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About the author, Kevin Fortuna

Kevin Fortuna lives in Cold Spring, New York. He obtained a Bachelors degree in English Literature from Georgetown University, where he graduated summa cum laude. He is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Quicksall Medal for Writing, a Fellowship in Fiction at the Prague Summer Writers Workshop and a Full Fellowship in Fiction at the University of New Orleans, where he received his MFA.

My Thoughts

I really enjoy short stories because they have to be so well crafted from start to finish or they just don’t work. Economy of phrase is essential, but not just economy, also precision, and style.

Kevin Fortuna’s collection of stories, The Dunning Man has all three.

I enjoyed all of the pieces in the book, but the first one, which took place en route to Atlantic City, resonated most with me, probably because I know the Academy Bus gates at Port Authority so well, and understood the frustration of the crowded queues for certain routes.

Every tale in the collection is absolutely worth the read, and what I particularly appreciated was that Fortuna’s voice changes slightly for each story, to better match the protagonist he’s depicting, but still remains discernable as being the same author writing. It’s a fine line, but it proves that his point of view is clear and strong, and I look forward to more from this author.

Goes well with A slice of Famous Ray’s pizza and a cold beer.